Edge of Danger Read Free Page B

closer.
    Later, at the reception in the Great Hall at Dauncey Place, Paul Rashid was approached by Charles Ferguson. The Brigadier said, ‘This is a rotten business, Paul. I’m so sorry. She was a great lady.’
    Kate said, ‘Do you know something you’re not telling us, Brigadier?’
    Ferguson looked at her. ‘Give me a call sometime.’
    He walked away. Kate said, ‘Paul?’
    ‘As soon as we’re done here,’ her brother said, ‘we’ll go and see him.’
    Two days later, Paul and Kate Rashid arrived at Charles Ferguson’s Georgian flat in Cavendish Place, London. They were admitted by Ferguson’s Gurkha manservant, Kim, and found that Ferguson was not alone. Two other people were there, one of them a small man, his hair so fair that it was almost white.
    ‘Lady Kate, this is Sean Dillon, who works for my department,’ Ferguson said, then introduced the other, a red-haired woman. ‘Detective Superintendent Hannah Bernstein from Special Branch. Lord Loch Dhu, how can I help? May we offer you a glass of champagne?’
    ‘No, thank you. My sister perhaps, but I would prefer a Bushmills Irish whiskey like the one Mr Dillon is pouring.’
    ‘Good man yourself,’ Dillon told him, ‘but first, the ladies,’ and he poured champagne.
    Hannah Bernstein said to Kate, ‘You went to Oxford, I believe? I was at Cambridge myself.’
    ‘Well, that’s not your fault,’ Kate said and gave a small smile.
    Her brother said, ‘I did Irish time, with the Grenadier Guards and the SAS. I heard many things about Sean Dillon there.’
    ‘Probably all true,’ Hannah Bernstein told him, with an undertone Rashid could not decipher.
    ‘Don’t listen to her,’ Dillon said. ‘I’ll always be the man in the black hat to her, but to you and me, Major, to soldiers everywhere, we’re the men who handle the crap the general public can’t. That’s a showstopper,’ Dillon added and turned to Kate. ‘Wouldn’t you agree that’s a showstopper?’ She wasn’t in the least offended. ‘Absolutely.’ ‘So,’ Paul Rashid said, ‘Igor Gatov, a commercial attache at the Russian Embassy, kills my mother while driving on the wrong side of the road, drunk. The police say he has diplomatic immunity.’ ‘I’m afraid so.’
    ‘And he’s gone back to Moscow?’ ‘No, he’s needed here,’ Ferguson told him. ‘Needed?’ Rashid asked.
    ‘The Secret Security Services would not thank me for telling you this, but they’re not my best friends. Tell him, Superintendent.’ ‘But how far do I go?’ she asked. ‘As far as it takes,’ Dillon said. ‘This Russian shite takes out a great lady and walks away.’ He poured
    another Bushmills, toasted young Kate, turned to Paul Rashid, and said in good Arabic, ‘Gatov is a dog of the first water. If the Superintendent hesitates, don’t hold it against her. She has delicate sensibilities. Her grandfather is a rabbi.’
    ‘And my father was a sheik,’ Paul Rashid said to her in Hebrew. ‘Perhaps we have much in common.’
    Her surprise was obvious. ‘I’m not sure what to say,’ she replied in the same.
    ‘Well, I am,’ Dillon cut between them in English. ‘It’s not just the Russian Embassy that’s keeping Gatov from justice. There’s the American connection.’
    There was a pause. ‘What would that be?’ Paul Rashid asked.
    Hannah said to Rashid, ‘As you know, the Americans and Russians are great rivals in southern Arabia, but they will work together if it suits them.’
    Paul said, ‘I know all this, but what has it to do with my mother’s death?’
    It was Dillon who told him, and in Arabic. ‘This piece of dung is a double agent. He worked for the Americans on the other side of the coin. It’s not only the Russians who don’t want him in court, but the Yanks as well. He’s too important.’
    ‘Too important for what?’ Paul Rashid asked.
    It was Ferguson who said, ‘The Americans and Russians are working on some kind of oil deal - and Gatov was brokering