Dead Line Read Free Page B

when the meeting broke up, Liz looked out of the corner of her eye at Bruno, who was lounging back in his chair, looking immensely self-satisfied. It wasn’t hard to guess why. How typical, she thought, feeding intelligence in at the top for maximum dramatic impact, rather than briefing colleagues in the normal way.
    Making her way downstairs, through the familiar glass security doors and out into Whitehall, Liz found herself in the company of the younger of the two CIA men, the Ivy Leaguer with the horn-rimmed glasses and the striped tie. It had been raining and there were puddles on the ground. He was wearing a Burberry raincoat that looked absurdly new.
    Smiling, he held his hand out. ‘Miles Brookhaven,’ he said in a soft voice, his accent mid-Atlantic. The afternoon traffic was light and they had the wide pavement to themselves. ‘Going this way?’ he said, indicating the gates of the Horse Guards building, twenty yards up Whitehall.
    She hadn’t intended to, but found herself reflecting that she could just as well get back to Thames House by walking across Horseguards Parade as by going down Whitehall and getting involved with the complicated crossings around Parliament. They turned into the gates together, passed the sentries in their boxes and emerged through the dark archway into the sunshine reflected off the red gravel of the parade ground.
    ‘Your Sir Nicholas,’ Brookhaven said appreciatively. ‘Is that what they mean by a mandarin?’
    Liz laughed. ‘Strictly speaking, a mandarin is a civil servant. He was a mandarin once, but now he’s got himself a profile - these days he’s a politico.’
    Brookhaven was walking quickly. A shade under six feet, he was lean and athletic-looking. He seemed to glide effortlessly over the pavement and though Liz was hardly a dawdler, she found it hard to keep up. Out of the corner of her eye, as they crossed the gravel, she saw Bruno Mackay climbing into the driving seat of a flashy-looking car. How on earth had he got one of the special passes that entitled him to park there? In fact, how had he got out there so quickly?
    ‘What do you make of what he said?’
    ‘Sir Nicholas?’ Liz shrugged. ‘Oh, I think we have to take him at his word, for the time being anyway. No doubt Six will pass on the intelligence when it’s been assessed. There’s nothing we or anyone can do until we know more.’
    She changed the subject. ‘How long have you been stationed here?’
    ‘Just two months,’ he said, before adding quickly, ‘but I know England well. My school had an exchange programme with a school here. I had a lovely time and I’ve often been back.’
    Lovely - not usually a favourite word of the American male. Brookhaven was an Anglophile, thought Liz, and keen to show it. They were always quick to tell you that they knew the place.
    ‘Which school?’ she asked.
    They had reached the corner of Birdcage Walk and Parliament Square. Brookhaven pointed almost directly ahead of them.
    ‘Right here. Westminster,’ he said. They stopped. ‘I’m off that way,’ he added, gesturing up Birdcage Walk.
    ‘Right. I’ll see more of you, no doubt.’
    ‘I hope so.’ He smiled quickly and walked off.
    Liz had intended to skirt Queen Elizabeth Hall and then set off diagonally towards the far corner of the square, but on an impulse she continued straight ahead, passed the front of Westminster Abbey and walked through the arch into the great courtyard of Westminster School. On the green in front of her a group of uniformed fifteen-year-olds was casually throwing a ball around. To her mind there was something maddeningly upper-class about the scene, something that she knew she could never quite understand or like.
    Feeling somehow out of place, out of time, she crossed the court, out through the tiny gate at the far end and into the sunlit maze of eighteenth-century houses that led her out opposite the House of Lords and the long, tapering wedge of a little park,