Lost for Words: A Novel Read Free Page A

seats, Jane Street was ready to call it a day. That was the surveillance game for you, waiting and watching, watching and waiting, but often ending up with nothing to show for it. Then, just as Jane’s hand came to rest on the ignition key, Grove’s voice blasted into her earpiece.
    ‘I have an eyeball. I have an eyeball.’
    The words shot through Jane’s body like an electric current. She reached instinctively into the Audi’s generous glove compartment and felt for her weapon. The IPX370 packed the punch of a Colt .38, but its magazine carried that one extra bullet that could make all the difference if things turned nasty. Six grams shy of its American counterpart, its lighter weight also made a real difference if you had to carry it round in your handbag all day.
    Jane’s hand padded around the glove compartment, but apart from the service manual and a spare packet of Handy Andies, she could feel nothing there. Where the hell was her weapon? Then it all came back with a cold sickening thud. The shooting range. That morning. Richard Lane. Lane was a classic yes-man and pen-pusher, with no more idea of the reality of life at the sharp end of things than she had of how to dance the lead role in Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. Probably less. She had been avoiding Lane like the plague, but he had finally tracked her down at the shooting range and delivered his usual lecture about her ‘cavalier disregard for the proper rules of procedure’, her ‘run-away expenses’ and her ‘attitude generally’. It had made her so angry that she had left her weapon behind. She had spent the whole afternoon fuming and hadn’t had a chance to discover her mistake. Now it was too late.
    Well, damn Lane, damn all the Lanes, sitting behind their desks in Thames House, watching the shafts of sunlight turn the river lapis lazuli, while their love-sick secretaries made bookings for lunch at Quo Vadis in Soho’s Dean Street. What did they know about putting your life on the line for your country?

    Penny was torn between thinking that the pages were rather good – pacey, well researched, vivid – and thinking that she was not really a writer at all. Perhaps it had been a huge mistake to retire early from the Foreign Office to pursue her lifelong ambition of becoming an author. It was true that there had been other reasons to leave. Her career had stagnated after its dazzlingly rapid rise during David Hampshire’s last years as Permanent Secretary, over twenty-five years ago. His favouritism had generated so much resentment that she remained stuck at the same level ever after, often moving sideways but never up. Her affair with David not only ruined her marriage, but arguably ruined her prospects as well. He was still her greatest friend, but the glory days were over, when he used to call her ‘my very own Anna Ford’, at a time when the nation’s favourite newscaster was considered the most desirable woman on Earth. Unlike the delicious Miss Ford, who had confidently allowed her hair to go white, Penny’s remained resolutely mahogany, matching her eyes, but increasingly at odds with the sad story told by the sags and creases of her loosening skin. Penny sighed. Nicola had never really forgiven her for the divorce – or, if it came to that, for the career – but she wasn’t going to think about that now; she must press on, if only to get away from the old feelings of hollow sacrifice that she fought against every day.

    ‘Damascus is on the bridge. Damascus is crossing the bridge,’ said Grove’s audibly tense voice. ‘Where the hell are you, Street?’
    Jane closed the glove compartment. She was about to face Ibrahim al-Shukra, one of the world’s most dangerous and ruthless men, responsible for the horrific, cowardly, tragic and completely uncalled for deaths of countless innocent members of the public, and she was unarmed.
    ‘Damascus has stopped on the bridge.’ Grove was audibly relieved. ‘Damascus is feeding the