It was beautiful but it’s over. I’m gone, back to my husband and my life and my horses. Think kindly of me, as I will of you.
Monica.
He sighed. Twice he had briefly thought she might be something other than she seemed. Reading her note, he realized he had been right at the beginning—she was just a civilian. He also had his life—with his country home and his writing career and his Nikki. Suddenly he wanted to see Nikki very badly.
As he drove back to the Nicosia Airport, Rowse guessed his two sergeants were somewhere behind him. They were. But McCready was not. Using the Head of Station in Nicosia, he had found a Royal Air Force communications flight heading for Lyneham, Wiltshire, that would get in ahead of the scheduled British Airways flight. McCready was already on it.
Just before midday, Rowse glanced out of the porthole of the plane and saw the green mass of the Troodos Mountains slipping away beneath the wing. He thought of Monica, and Mahoney still propping up the bar, and al-Mansour, and he was glad to be going home. For one thing, the green fields of Gloucestershire were a good deal safer than the caldron of the Levant.
Chapter 5
Rowse’s flight touched down just after lunch, with the time gained from flying west from Cyprus. McCready had preceded him by an hour, though Rowse did not know it. As he emerged from the airplane cabin into the jetway connecting to the terminal, a trim young woman in a British Airways uniform was holding up a sign saying, MR. ROWSE.
He identified himself.
“Ah, there’s a message for you at the Airport Information desk, just outside the customs hall,” she said.
He thanked her, puzzled, and walked on toward passport control. He had not told Nikki he was coming, wishing to surprise her. When he got to the information desk, the message said, “Scott’s. Eight P.M. Lobsters on me!”
He cursed. That meant he would not get home to Gloucestershire and Nikki until morning.
His car was in the long-term car park—no doubt, if he had not returned, the ever-efficient Firm would have had it removed and returned to his widow. He took the courtesy shuttle, retrieved his car, and checked into one of the airport hotels. It gave him time for a bath, a shave, sleep, and to change into a suit. Since he intended to drink a lot of fine wine if the Firm was paying, he decided to take a taxi to and from the West End of London.
First he rang Nikki. She was ecstatic, her voice shrill with a mixture of relief and delight. “Are you all right, darling?”
“Yes, I’m fine.”
“And is it over?”
“Yes, the research is finished, all bar a couple of extra details that I can sort out here in England. How have you been?”
“Oh, great. Everything’s great. Guess what happened?”
“Surprise me.”
“Two days after you left, a man came. Said he was furnishing a large company flat in London, looking for carpets and rugs. He bought the lot, all our stock. Paid cash. Sixteen thousand pounds. Darling, we’re flush!”
Rowse held the receiver and stared at the Degas print on the wall.
“This buyer, where was he from?”
“Mr. Da Costa? Portugal. Why?”
“Dark-haired, olive-skinned?”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
Arab, Rowse thought. Libyan. That meant that while Nikki was out in the barn where they kept the stock of carpets and rugs that they sold as a sideline, someone had been in the house and probably bugged the phone. Al-Mansour certainly liked to cover all the angles. Had he made a single ill-judged phone call to Nikki from Vienna or Malta or Cyprus, as he had been tempted to do, he would have blown away himself and the mission.
“Well,” he said cheerfully, “I don’t care where he was from. If he paid cash, he’s wonderful.”
“When are you coming home?” she asked excitedly.
“Tomorrow morning. Be there about nine.”
He presented himself at the superb fish restaurant in Mount Street at ten past eight and was shown to where Sam McCready already sat at a corner table. McCready liked corner tables. That way, each diner could sit with his back to a wall, at right angles to each other. It was easier to converse that way than sitting side by side, yet each was able to see the restaurant. “Never take it in the back,” one of his training officers had told him years ago. The same man was later betrayed by George Blake and “took it” in a KGB interrogation cell. McCready had spent much of his life with his back to the wall.
Rowse ordered lobster and asked for it Newberg. McCready had his cold, with mayonnaise. Rowse waited until a glass of Meursault had been poured for each and the sommelier had departed before he mentioned the mysterious buyer of the rugs. McCready chewed on a mouthful of Benbecula lobster, swallowed, and said, “Damn. Did you phone Nikki from Cyprus anytime before I tapped the hotel phone?”