You fool, you bloody, bloody fool, she told herself. She was, indeed, very frightened. However, she gradually calmed herself by concentrating on her mantra… Ms computer, his computer, his computer
… Tonight or tomorrow morning she must gain access to David's laptop. It would be in his suite. She had to get hold of it, there'd be proof abundant there… David, she tried to convince herself, was a superstitious creature, a character of habit and custom. He had to be he had to still be using those old passwords.
Robbie was long dead and he couldn't possibly know that she knew them too.
However stupid and far-fetched, she had to try.
CHAPTER TWELVE
In the Machine The morning sun haloed the Gothic turrets and spires, and the baroque roof statuary of the Grand' Place. From the windows of the suite's lounge, David Winterborne saw them as the back of a movie set. There was gold, pinked marble, stone, the flickering of birds.
The murmur of traffic was fended off by secondary glazing.
Seven-fifteen. Fraser sat on the sofa, an impatient, barely restrained machine.
Winterborne had chosen to sit at the desk, in the leather swivel chair, toying with his fat black pen with his long fingers, his bathrobe closed primly over his knees.
'… must have gone Stateside, on an early tourist flight. That's the best Roussillon's been able to do, trace him as far as Schipol. He's going home—"
"After Strickland?" Winterborne asked quickly.
Fraser shrugged.
"Could be."
The man's features were pinched with anticipation, and something like resentment.
For Winterborne, Fraser's presence obscured the vista of the day's anticipated successes. The Skyliner flight, the publicity that would attend it, the assiduousness of EC officials Fraser had come to his suite with dirty moral hands, informing him of Gant's escape, and demanding that he commit himself irrevocably regarding Marian.
Strick-land had not replied to the e-mail, had not taken the bait.
Fraser did not believe he would. He had another way' You positive that an approach to this man Mclntyre is the way to proceed?"
Fraser nodded, shifting slightly on the sofa, to greater comfort.
"Mclntyre is the man looking for Gant, just as seriously as we are.
Gant's gone home—"
"You think."
"I think we know. Sir…" Winterborne waved him to continue, the permission of a sultan.
"He's a vindictive sod… ex-CIA, joined the Bureau in the early nineties. I know him, sir. And he was Strickland's Case Officer in the field. They did a lot of dirty things for the Company and Washington, none of which Mclntyre would want seeing the light of day."
It was a rehearsed, carefully offered argument.
Persuasively complete.
"I'm certain he would help us, in order to keep Strickland quiet, if he thought he could get his hands on Gant by doing so. And keep his own nose clean… If not, you can offer him a security vice-presidency.
Fat salary, big title, key to the executive bog—" His nose wrinkled in contempt. They like that sort of thing, his sort of Yank."
"So you've reiterated."
"He'd be likely to know Strickland's bolt holes aliases, the sort of detail we don't have." It was seductive. The shadow of a flitting bird crossed the windows. The email stratagem might not work, this could be more certain. A pigeon settled on the windowsill.
"I see that." He leaned forward, adding: "You and Roussillon should have stopped Gant yesterday, Fraser."
There have been underestimations all round sir."
Winterborne could not keep the faint, momentary flush from his cheeks.
He snapped back: "Stopping a rogue accident investigator who's already wanted by the FBI is, I would have thought, easier than disposing of a high-profile MP!" He instantly regretted his loss of control.
"I still don't see how you avoid the danger of involving the FBI in this."
Fraser seemed mollified. The whiteness that had appeared at the sides of his nose vanished.
"Offer him the choice, sir. If Gant finds Strickland before Mclntyre finds Gant, then maybe all the dirty tricks will pop out of the box. To prevent that, and to secure a prosperous future… which would you choose, sir if you weren't already you?" His hands opened in a gesture of conclusion.
"You can get rid of Gant and Strickland at the same time and have the resources of the FBI to do it for you." It was the voice of a tempter.
Or was it simply that of a machine holding the recorded voice of inevitability?
Winterborne wrapped the bathrobe around his legs as he refolded them.
He sensed himself as shuffling indecisively before a subordinate, of having been dragooned into choice.
"Mclntyre isn't popular or liked maybe not even trusted by the Bureau.
He could be shaken out any time. And he's greedy…"
Tell him nothing!" Winterborne felt impelled to insist.
"Of course not, sir."
"Very well. Take the earliest flight to Washington you can get.
Persuade Mclntyre—" He stood up.
"I have a breakfast meeting at eight, I need to—"
"Sir the woman?" It was a demand rather than a question, and Winterborne was reduced to the sensation of himself as a boy about to leave the headmaster's study, half-escaped from punishment, and then called back to face more accusations.
"What?" he snapped.
"What about the woman?"
"You have to decide, sir you have to give a clear instruction."
"Now? Why now?" He felt heated, unnerved. He did not turn to face Fraser. The pigeon lifted away from the windowsill as if not wishing to become a coconspirator.
"Not now…" he murmured.
"I watched her, sir," Fraser insisted.
"Watched her deal with Jessop and Cobb when they put the f righteners on late last night. Dark street, a man following her… She won't be frightened off, sir!"
Winterborne whirled round on Fraser, his features compressed with a violent anger. Gant and Strickland yes. The situation had become unstable to the point of explosion, he must take a risk there… but this? Fraser was applying the perspective. The man thought Marian's death a simple matter, something expedient and hardly to be debated. But this is Marian.
"Strickland, Gant, Marian anyone else?" he attempted.
Eraser grinned.
"It's not much… It's not out of control," he soothed. Not yet, his eyes declared.
"But you need to watch Campbell, sir. She'll work on him and he's an invertebrate at the best of times—"
"Ben Campbell now! For God's sake, Fraser!"
"I'm not suggesting anything specific, sir. Just tell Roussillon to keep an eye on him. If you get rid of the woman, there'll be no need.
He'll have been involved.
The Judas-goat. That will shut him up. But you have to instruct Roussillon to eliminate her."
"Not now! I do not intend to be late for my meeting, Fraser. Make your arrangements regarding Washington. I'll talk to you before you leave."
He turned away, his body once more heated, quivery with a sense of being cornered. Marian was, indeed, his enemy yet how could he consign her to the dark? How could he—?
As he walked into the bedroom to begin dressing, he heard Fraser telephone the hotel desk to make his flight reservation.
Yes, that certainly would be achieved, the elimination of Strickland and Gant. But, Marian?
She woke in the old-fashioned hotel bedroom, startled; as if she had expected the comfortable familiarity of other old houses, Uffingham especially, only to find herself betrayed by memory. She felt shaken from thin, fitful sleep. Her dreams had been filled with faces peering down at her which did not quite disappear whenever she roused. Grey daylight struggled through the heavy curtains. Marian sat bolt upright, rubbing her right arm with her left hand… just as she had done after the light-footed man, his single breath hot against her cheek, had collided with her on the dark, cobbled pavement outside the hotel.