Dead Line

TWENTY-NINE

Charles Wetherby was sitting in his armchair by the window of his office reading the draft JIC papers for the next day’s meeting, when his secretary tapped on the door and put a tentative head in. ‘It’s Geoffrey Fane on the line.’

Wetherby was a patient man, but even he had his limits. What did Fane want now? Yesterday he’d revealed that the two ‘names’ and their threat to the Gleneagles conference had come from some highly placed Syrian source whom the Americans had actually donated to Fane’s people. And who had done the donating? Miles Brookhaven for pity’s sake, seemingly a bit of private enterprise. And what were these two names up to? Just about everything except threatening the conference, so far as MI5 had been able to find out. But Fane had calmly come over and asked him to protect them. From what, exactly? To judge by the attack on Liz, it was MI5 who needed the protection. Just who was deceiving whom? And why in the name of hell and damnation had Fane not found out sooner about Brookhaven’s links to Syria – if that’s what he had – while that young man was enjoying a ringside seat on all the security arrangements for Gleneagles? He’d asked Fane that and got no plausible response. But at least Fane had volunteered to talk to Andy Bokus about it. That might be a tricky conversation. How did you tactfully tell someone like Bokus that his man might be working for the opposition? Well that was Fane’s problem, thank God. And now what did the man want?

He walked over to his desk and picked up the telephone warily. ‘Hello, Geoffrey,’ he said.

‘Charles, I’m afraid there’s been a further development. Not a good one, either. Our Syrian source has been killed in the Troodos mountains in Cyprus. He was on his way to a meeting with Peter Templeton, head of our Cyprus station, who was running him.’

‘Was he assassinated?’

‘It’s starting to look like it. He drove off a narrow track that leads to the monastery where Templeton was waiting to meet him. The car was completely smashed up, and then there was a fire. Naturally Peter didn’t wait around to investigate, but he’s been talking to his sources in the Cypriot police. Apparently, the rear tyres in Jaghir’s car were both shot out – there must have been a sniper somewhere on the hillside.’

‘What have the Syrians said?’

‘That’s the interesting thing. They only cooperated minimally with the police. Didn’t seem to want to go into it much.’

‘Perhaps they were hoping to hide the fact that he was an intelligence officer.’

‘Perhaps. But in Syria they’ve hushed it up as well. I think they must have killed him.’

‘Which means we have another leak somewhere,’ said Wetherby bitterly.

‘Possibly,’ said Fane. ‘Or it could be the same one.’