Illegal Action

52

We will be landing at Cork in twenty minutes.” Michael Fane did up his tie and ran a comb through his hair. It wasn’t that he was expecting the Garda officers meeting him to be particularly spruce, but they’d be looking to him to lead and he was determined to be authoritative.

He wondered if they would be armed. I hope so, he thought a little nervously, recalling Brian Ackers’ warning. Brian had kept stressing the possible danger Liz might be in, yet seemed perfectly happy to be chucking Michael into the middle of it.

Not that Michael could complain. When Brian had summoned him, he had assumed, despite Liz’s assurances, that he was going to be reprimanded for his surveillance of Ivanov. Brian had looked furious—red in the face, his eyes darting about unnervingly. But Michael quickly discovered that Brian’s agitation had nothing to do with him, and he was so relieved that at first he didn’t take in what he was being told to do.

“You’re to go to Ireland right away,” Brian said at once. “Liz went there early this morning—we don’t know exactly where she’s gone yet. Take the first flight you can get to Cork. Peggy Kinsolving has talked to the Garda. Keep in touch with her and she’ll arrange for them to meet you. If there’s any trouble, you’re to defer to them, but otherwise they’ll look to you for direction.”

“What do I do when I get there?”

Brian looked at him as if he should have known. “Find Liz,” he said shortly. “Wherever she is, locate her and bring her back. I don’t care who she’s with or what she’s doing, you’re to remove her at once and return with her to England. Is that clear?”

It couldn’t be much clearer, thought Michael, though he could see an obvious problem. “What if she won’t come? I mean, she usually gives the orders, not me.”

“For the time being, you report directly to me. When you find her, tell her you are just a messenger, conveying my orders.”

Thanks a lot, thought Michael, but he was excited by the challenge. As he left he almost missed the tall, slim figure standing in Brian’s secretary’s office, looking through the window down into the inner atrium. As the man turned, Michael saw that it was his father.

“Hello, Michael,” said Geoffrey Fane.

His father was his usual elegant figure in pinstripe suit and silk tie and Michael, seeing him there in his boss’s office, felt the familiar feeling of inferiority and anger swell up. I don’t know what you’re doing here, thought Michael, but trust you to show up just when I’ve got something real to do at last. Here you are to muscle in on it and spoil it.

But just as the fog of all the usual emotions started to settle, he stopped long enough to cast a sideways look at Geoffrey, who was just standing there looking at him. He suddenly seemed to Michael—there was no other way to describe it—forlorn. And then, for reasons Michael could not have described or explained or even halfway understood, he saw in this bogeyman figure of a father something he had not seen before, something that had nothing to do with the figure he had created in his mind, something that instead seemed entirely, unexpectedly human.

“Dad,” he found himself saying, “I’m in a bit of a rush. I’ve got to go to Ireland.” And he paused, wondering where these words were leading, until out of nowhere new words came to him and he said suddenly, “When I get back, maybe we could have lunch.”

Geoffrey Fane looked so surprised that Michael started to regret his impetuous proposal. “Yes,” his father finally said, “I would really like that.” And he smiled, but uncertainly, awkwardly—something Michael had never seen in him before.

“I’ll ring you when I’m back,” said Michael confidently.

He basked in that feeling now, as the 737 dipped one wing and the Irish coast disappeared from view. The prospect of this trip no longer seemed so daunting. It would be an anticlimax to get sent out with such urgency, only to find there wasn’t a problem at all; part of him secretly hoped to see some action. It would be nice to have something to tell his father.