Night Probe! (Dirk Pitt 6)

"You left the service twenty-five years ago."

"God, it seems two centuries at least."

"Your name is Brian Shaw now."

"Yes." Shaw nodded at the coffin waiting for the diggers to cover it. "He insisted I take a new identity when I retired."

"A wise move. You had more enemies than Attila the Hun. The SMERSH agent who assassinated you would have become a Soviet hero."

"No need to worry any longer." He smiled. "I doubt if my old adversaries are still alive. Besides, I'm an old has-been. My head isn't worth the price of a liter of petrol."

"You never married." It was a statement, not a question.

He shook his head. "Only briefly, but she was killed. You remember."

She flushed slightly. "I guess I never really accepted you as having a wife."

"And you?"

"A yea

r after you left. My husband worked in the cryptographic analysis section. His name is Graham Huston. We live in London and manage nicely with our pensions and the profits of an antique shop."

"Not quite like the old days."

"Are you still living in the West Indies?"

"It became rather unhealthy, so I came home. Bought a small working farm on the Isle of Wight."

"I can't picture you as a gentleman farmer."

"Ditto for you selling antiques."

The grave diggers appeared from a pub across the road and took up their shovels. Soon the dirt was slapping against the wooden top of the coffin.

"I loved that old man," Shaw said wistfully. "There were times I wanted to kill him, and there were times I wished I could have embraced him as a father."

"He had a special affection for you too," she said. "He always fussed and worried when you were on an assignment. The other agents he treated more like chess pieces."

"You knew him better than anyone," he said softly. "A man has few secrets from his secretary of twenty years."

She gave a slight, perceptible nod. "It used to annoy him. I came to read his thoughts on many occasions."

Her voice faltered and she could no longer bear to look at the grave. She turned away, and Shaw took her arm and led her from the churchyard. "Have you time for a drink?"

She opened her handbag, picked out a tissue and sniffled into it. "I really must be getting back to London."

"Then it's goodbye, Mrs. Huston."

"Brian." She uttered the sound as if it stuck in her throat, yet she refrained from speaking his real name.

"I will never get used to thinking of you as Brian Shaw."

"The two people we were died long before our old chief," Shaw said gently.

She squeezed his hand and her eyes were moist. "A pity we can't relive the past."

Before he could answer she pulled an envelope from her purse and slipped it into the side pocket of his overcoat. He said nothing, nor did he appear to notice.