‘I’m tired as dead dog.’
Procter rubbed his hands together. ‘You should try going to bed. I hear it’s the recommended cure for tiredness.’
‘I’ll sleep later.’
‘I’ve got a thermos in the car. You want a cup of coffee?’
Alvarez shook his head. ‘I’m trying to reduce my caffeine intake.’
‘Really?’
‘It’s not good for the body.’
‘And how’s that working out for you?’
‘Not so good.’
Procter turned around again and leaned his considerable weight against the fence. The wood made a loud, threatening creak.
‘You didn’t hear that,’ he said.
‘Hear what?’
The associate deputy director had always been a chunky 3XL kind of guy, but without a suit to thin him out a bit he looked like he was carrying more weight than was good for two people, let alone one. Alvarez, who measured his own body fat in the single percentiles, saw a heart attack waiting to happen.
‘It’s Saturday,’ Procter stated, ‘the weekend.’
‘I know.’
‘You know what a weekend is?’
‘I used to.’
‘What’s on your mind that couldn’t wait until Monday?’
‘A woman.’
Procter smiled. ‘My dad used to say behind the scowl of every man lurks a member of the fairer sex.’
‘That’s probably true,’ Alvarez said. ‘But this isn’t just any woman.’ He drew a notebook from inside his coat and opened it. ‘Her name’s Rebecca Sumner, aka Rachel Swanson, American citizen, used to be one of ours, formerly of the Directorate of Intelligence working the Europe office until around four months ago.’
Procter’s face became serious. ‘The woman who met with Ozols’s killer?’
Alvarez nodded. ‘She was a good analyst, a hard worker, on the rise, ambitious, all that shit. She resigned her post to work in the private sector. On the surface nothing more than a government employee off to land a bigger paycheck. Only she didn’t take a job with any of the usual suspects. In fact, she left the country under a false passport three weeks after leaving her desk with the company. She went to France and rented a small apartment in Marseilles, paid for six months’ rent in advance. In cash.’
Procter looked sceptical. ‘On an analyst’s take home?’
‘If it was,’ Alvarez said, ‘then I’m in the wrong job and you can take my verbal resignation right now. But no, there were no withdrawals from her bank account to match the deposit. Someone else gave her the money. She had no means of employment in France, but monthly donations were made into her US bank account to the amount of her former salary.’
‘No kidding?’
Alvarez flipped over a couple of pages. ‘On Wednesday, French police entered her apartment and discovered a few things of note, such as a sink full of burned documents and communications equipment. Half her clothes were gone. Drawers were left opened. The front door hadn’t been locked.’
‘What spooked her?’
‘A neighbour confirmed she left her apartment in the early hours of Friday morning. Before she left, Sumner made a couple of calls to John Kennard’s cell phone. He was already dead by then, of course, and Sumner didn’t leave a message. It was the first time she’d ever phoned him. They had never worked together at the agency or trained together at the Farm. They lived twenty miles apart, had different social circles, no family in common, no reason to explain why she had his phone number. Seems when he didn’t answer her call, she packed her bags and disappeared.’
‘To Paris.’
Alvarez nodded. ‘Her cousin owns an apartment there that she was using. Anyway, she’s there less than a day when French authorities try to apprehend a suspect they believed to be the man responsible for the hotel massacre. He was seen entering the building with Sumner. Obviously we know what happened next.
‘The killer knows Sumner, who knows Kennard. For argument’s sake, let’s say they’ve been working together. Kennard was in Paris with me working on getting the location of those missiles from Ozols. He had access to all my notes. More important, he was there when Ozols gave me the time and location of the meet. Maybe he passed that on to Sumner, who did the same to the killer. A nice arrangement. Efficient. Fewer risks.
‘But something goes wrong because Kennard is killed, which spooks Sumner into leaving Marseilles. She thinks she’s next, so she’s meets with Ozols’s killer, who survived an assassination attempt. Hoyt drowns in the bath.’
‘A clean-up.’
‘Exactly.’
‘So who’s behind it?’
‘I don’t know for certain,’ Alvarez answered honestly. ‘I can’t see Sumner and Kennard, two young CIA employees, turning mercenary. Kennard maybe, but the fact that Sumner continued to receive a pay packet equalling her old salary tells me she could have been tricked into thinking she was part of a legit, albeit off the books, op.’
‘Only someone within the agency could pull that off,’ Procter stated. ‘You’ve got a suspect, haven’t you?’
‘I’ve no proof.’
‘Go on.’
‘Remember: Russian missiles, only six people knew about Hoyt. I’m one of them, a techie in Paris is another, and the rest are the four people in the briefing room when I gave my report.’
‘And I’m one of those,’ Procter said.
Alvarez nodded.
Procter blew out some air. He shook his head. ‘Old bastard’s retiring next year.’
‘Maybe he wants to add to his retirement fund.’
Procter looked thoughtful. He didn’t speak for a long time.
‘You’ve done a good job, Antonio,’ he said eventually. ‘But given the sensitivity of what you’ve just told me, I don’t want you to speak of this to anyone again. That includes me.’
‘What are you saying?’
‘I’m going to tell you this because I like you, not because you need to know,’ Procter explained. ‘I’ve known for some time that we had a problem in NCS, someone playing by their own rules. This isn’t the first time something like this has happened. I’ve had people looking into this whole thing for a while, from other angles.’ They watched a car drive past until it became small in the distance. ‘But I’ve never been able to get close before. And I never would have guessed Ferguson would be who I’m after, but now we might just have made that all-important break. You’ve helped immeasurably already, but you’re too close to this. You-’
Alvarez scowled. He adjusted his footing. ‘Sir, don’t take me off this now when I’m this close to nailing this fucker. If Ferguson really is behind this and we get him, we’ll be able to catch Ozols’s killer next, then whoever murdered John. Everyone.’
Procter put a hand on Alvarez’s shoulder. ‘I respect your dedication but you’ve done as much as you can. If it is Ferguson, then he knows you are on his trail. He’s probably got people watching everything you do.’
‘You seriously believe that?’
‘Why not? Ferguson has been so careful about covering his tracks that he’s killed or tried to kill everyone who even knows a piece of the puzzle. If that’s the case, he’s sure as shit going to keep an eye on the person trying to put those pieces together.’
Alvarez looked around. He thought back, trying to remember if he’d seen anything that could be surveillance. There wasn’t, but he just might not have detected it. Alvarez was a good operative, but he wasn’t deluded about his skills. He couldn’t guarantee no one had tailed him.
‘So what do we do now?’
‘If you continue openly investigating, we may force him to abandon his plans and might never get this close to him again. We can’t have that. We’re going to pretend the matter is closed and make Ferguson feel secure while we look for evidence. You can’t be involved in that. Look what happened when you found out about Hoyt. He was dead twenty-four hours later.’
Alvarez couldn’t hide his disappointment. ‘I’ve worked my ass off for the last two weeks on this, losing a good five pounds in the process of trying to track down Ozols’s killer and that goddamn flash drive — not to mention all the months it took me to get Ozols to play ball so we could get those missiles and stop any rogue states from getting their fingers on the technology. A colleague of mine is dead, killed by the same people who murdered Ozols. That person is someone inside Langley, if it’s Ferguson then he’s a fucking traitor whose hand I have shaken, and you want me to let it go?’