Games Traitors Play

34

Fielding had told him he was coming. It was courtesy, but it was also a matter of security. Giles Cordingley lived at the top of Raginnis Hill, overlooking the Cornish fishing village of Mousehole, ten miles from Land’s End, and visitors to his granite farmhouse were rare. He was too old for surprises. A security camera was positioned discreetly to the left of the high oak gates, and it took a while for them to swing open and let Fielding’s Range Rover pass through into the gravel courtyard. His driver parked in front of an old stable block and took a look around, taking in other security cameras, the high walls that enclosed a forgotten orchard. Then he made a call on his mobile and returned to the car, leaving Fielding to approach the house on his own.

Cordingley had been Chief of MI6 in the 1990s, serving for three years before becoming master of an Oxford College and then retiring to Cornwall. He was the last of the Cold War Chiefs, the end of an era. Well into his sixties by the time he reached the top, he had enjoyed a long career that had begun with a role in Oleg Penkovsky’s recruitment. He had managed the defection of Vladimir Kuzichkin when he was head of station in Tehran, overseen the handling of Oleg Gordievsky, and lost agents at the hands of Aldrich Ames. Most importantly, he was one of the few people who knew about Nikolai Primakov, having personally authorised his recruitment.

There was no answer when Fielding rang the doorbell and he eventually found Cordingley behind the house, tending to a row of beehives in what must have been the old vegetable garden. Fielding thought his face looked fleshier than he remembered, like pale putty, big heavy-rimmed glasses making it seem rounder, more vulnerable. Despite the dramatic clifftop setting, there was no sense of a man enjoying his retirement in the great outdoors, no ruddy, windblown cheeks or healthy complexion. He looked like a man unused to daylight. For a moment, Fielding wondered if he was ill, if that was why he had moved to Cornwall.

‘Good of you to see me, Giles,’ Fielding began, knowing that it would be futile to wait for him to stop tending his bees. Cordingley was wearing a protective veil but no gloves or suit. His hands looked feminine, unthreatening. Fielding assumed he had operated the main gates with the device that was hanging around his neck. His hospitality didn’t seem to extend beyond allowing entry, and he hadn’t bothered to come round and greet his visitor. It was a reminder that Cordingley’s relationship with the Service was complicated, that he had left under a cloud of homophobia, been denied a KCMG, the usual gong for a Chief.

‘Duty rather than goodness,’ Cordingley said, putting a lid back on one of the hives. Fielding kept his distance, knowing that angry bees were all part of the welcome. The garden, he thought, looked tatty and tired. Only the hives were well tended. A gentle wind was blowing in off the sea far below. On the far side of the bay, St Michael’s Mount rose out of the water like a fairytale castle. A brace of beam trawlers were returning home to nearby Newlyn under a high mackerel sky, their nets hung out on either side for a final trawl of the bay. If it wasn’t for the froideur of his host, Fielding thought that the idyllic scene was almost heart-warming, reason enough for him to have dedicated his life to the Service.

Cordingley walked past him towards the back door of the house, a slow amble that still drew a cloud of bees in his slipstream. Fielding swatted one away as nonchalantly as he could. He felt a sharp pain on the back of his hand.

‘They only sting when they sense fear,’ Cordingley said, entering the house. He was almost eighty, but he hadn’t missed Fielding’s flinch.