Illegal Action Read Free Page B

arrangement which suited them both perfectly. It was warm and happy and undemanding.
    If Piet knew what Liz did (and she suspected he did as she had met him at a colleague’s Christmas party), he never asked. It wasn’t that kind of relationship. They laughed a lot and ate good food. They talked about music and plays and the state of the world, and everything except work. Today they were going to a late-afternoon concert at St. John’s Smith Square. Then they’d have dinner somewhere and Piet would come back and share the goose-down duvet. Liz curled her toes in anticipation. They would stay in bed late in the morning and then after a pub lunch, Piet would make for the airport and back to Amsterdam.
    All in all, a heavenly prospect. Thank goodness for counter-espionage, she thought, though still there in a small corner of her mind was her first love, counter-terrorism and working with Charles. She hoped all was well with him. And Joanne, she mentally added—conscientiously.

5
    W ally Woods was too tired to sleep. He’d worked seven shifts in four days, which would have been beyond a joke in the old days. They’d been camped out in South Kensington for the last two weeks, trailing an Iranian who specialised in late-night partying. Dennis Rudge had come down with flu and there hadn’t been any option but to stand in for him.
    Rudge had struggled back at last that morning, looking like death and blowing his nose, so Wally had gone home. He drove, dazed with fatigue, up to Crouch End, where he’d found a bad-tempered note from his wife, who had already gone to work. “Dear Stranger” it began, which didn’t sound too good. He caught three hours’ kip only to wake up, groggy, to find Molly, his dog, licking his face and whimpering for a walk.
    There was nothing for it. He’d never get back to sleep. So he showered and shaved and dressed, then took Molly in the car and drove down here, to Hampstead Heath, where there was plenty of room, even for a Doberman with energy.
    He liked to walk on the heath. It was a natural, uninhabited space, which had only one thing in common with North London around it—anything could happen there, and did. Its different areas—woodland, rough meadow, a string of ponds, Parliament Hill with its panoramic views of the City of London—afforded constant variety to his walks. Parking in The Grove, opposite a row of elegant Georgian mansions, he put on his anorak, and walked down a tree-lined lane, with Molly on her lead. The wind was picking up and the sun was obscured by cloud. Where
is
spring? he wondered, still feeling stiff after so many hours on duty, sitting in a parked car.
    When they reached the bottom by the boating pond, where the heath began, he let Molly go. And it was as he watched the dog lope off—funny how unthreatening a Doberman’s trot was, considering the fear they inspired in people—that he saw the man. Trudging past the men’s pond, then turning and heading up the hill along a path much favoured by dog walkers and joggers, his back to Wally—which paradoxically was what gave him away.
    It sounded strange, as Wally knew from trying to explain to his wife, but after twelve years of following people for a living, the way they looked from behind did for Wally just what fingerprints did for a forensic technician. The traits were just as individual, just as telltale. So when he saw that slow gait, like that of a man walking to get married to someone he didn’t love, Wally knew at once he’d watched that back before.
    And who it belonged to: Vladimir Rykov, trade attaché at the Russian Embassy. Wally had followed him before—to a restaurant in Charlotte Street, to a meeting at the Institute of Directors in Pall Mall, once on a Saturday to an Arsenal match in their last season at the old High-bury ground.
    But what was Rykov doing here in the middle of a working day? Steady on, he told himself, he’s probably going for a walk, just like you are, only without a dog.