her a Marlboro and flicked a brass lighter made from an AK round.
‘There you go, sweetie.’
She reached for the lighter. ‘Where did you get this, Rupert? I never asked you.’
‘Oh, it’s a Gulf War souvenir. I was ambushed, in a pretty bad situation, and I picked up an Iraqi AK assault rifle. It saved my bacon until help arrived – funnily enough, in the person of Sergeant Major Clancy Smith over there. Afterwards, when I checked, there was one round left in the magazine.’
‘That was close.’
‘It surely was. I pocketed it and had it made into a lighter by a jeweller in Bond Street.’ He took it from her. ‘You know the phrase, Kate? Memento mori?’
‘Of course, Rupert, my darling. Reminder of death.’
‘Exactly.’ He tossed the lighter up and grabbed it again. ‘I should be dead, Kate, three or four times over. I’m not. Why?’ He smiled. ‘I don’t know, but this reminds me.’
‘Do you still go to mass, darling, to confession?’
‘No. But God knows and understands everything, isn’t that what they say, Kate? And he has an infinite capacity for forgiveness.’ He smiled again. ‘If anyone needs that, I do. But then you know that. You probably know everything about me. I should think that it took you all of half an hour after I introduced myself at that reception in London before you had your security people on my case.’
‘Twenty minutes, darling. You were too good to be true. A blessing from Allah, really. I’d lost my mother and my three brothers and then there you were, a Dauncey I never even knew existed – and thank God for it.’
Rupert Dauncey felt emotion welling inside of him. He reached for her hand. ‘You know I’d kill for you, Kate.’
‘I know, darling. You may well have to.’
He smiled and put a cigarette in his mouth. ‘I love you to bits.’
‘But Rupert, women don’t figure on your agenda.’
‘I know, isn’t it a shame? But I still love you.’ He leaned back. ‘So where are we?’
‘Senator Daniel Quinn over there. It’s very interesting how chummy he seems to be with Cazalet. Before when I wanted him dead, it was because his people were finding out too much about my activities. Now, I wonder if he doesn’t have some bigger agenda.’
‘Such as?’
‘I don’t know. But I think it would be interesting to find out…Do you know that he has a daughter, Rupert? Named Helen. She’s a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford.’
‘Yes? And?’
‘I want you to cultivate her.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Well, you know about my little charitable works, don’t you? I believe in supporting oppressed and minority political groups. People like Act of Class Warfare, the United Anarchist Front, the Army of National Liberation in Beirut. They’re a little wild, but…well meaning.’
‘Well meaning, my backside.’
‘Rupert, how unkind. Well, anyway, the Act of Class Warfare education programme operates from my castle, Loch Dhu, in western Scotland, a rather run-down old thing but nice and remote. It provides adventure courses for young people. Teaches them how to handle themselves. And for some of the older ones…a little more.’
‘Like in Hazar?’
‘Very good, Rupert! Yes. The Army of Arab Liberation Children’s Trust. That’s rather more serious business. Full paramilitary training, run by mercenaries. Some of them are Irish, you know. There are plenty of them around since this whole peace process thing began.’
‘So what do you want from me?’
‘I want you to oversee Loch Dhu, start keeping an eagle eye out, make sure nobody is snooping around. And I want you to keep close contact with Act of Class Warfare.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I’ve got a feeling we’ll be seeing Senator Quinn again, and sooner than we think. Did you know, Rupert, that Act of Class Warfare has branches at most of the major universities now? Filled by the children of the affluent who want to destroy capitalism?’ She chuckled.
‘And what does that have to do with Quinn?’
‘Because, my dear Rupert…Helen Quinn is a member of the Oxford branch.’
In London the following morning, Major Roper appeared at Sean Dillon’s cottage at Stable Mews, a strange young man in a state-of-the-art electric wheelchair. He wore a reefer coat, his hair was down to his shoulders, and his face was a taut mask of the kind of scar tissue that only comes from burns. An important bomb disposal expert with the Royal Engineers, decorated with the George Cross, his extraordinary career had been terminated by what he called ‘a silly little bomb’ in a small family car in Belfast, courtesy of the Provisional IRA.
He’d survived and discovered a whole new career in computers. Now if you wanted to find out anything in cyberspace, no matter how buried, it was Roper you called.
Ferguson and Dillon were there to greet him.
‘Sean, you bastard,’ Roper said cheerfully.
Dillon smiled and helped him over the step. ‘You look well.’
‘Hannah didn’t say much. She sent me a file, though. Are we going to war again?’
‘I’d say it’s a distinct possibility.’
He followed Roper along the corridor and they found Ferguson on the telephone. He replaced it. ‘Major, how goes it?’
‘Fine, General. You’ve got work for me?’
Ferguson nodded. ‘Indeed we have.’
For the next half hour, they went over the whole background of the case, until finally Dillon said, ‘And what we would like you to do first is check out those groups she’s been giving money to. If she’s got an Achilles’ heel, that may be it. I don’t know what we’re looking for, exactly –’ he grinned ‘– but we’ll know when we find it.’
‘You realize,’ Roper said, ‘that if Quinn’s people checked her out a few months ago, she knows it. They’re bound to have left footprints, which means that she’s had time to try to cover her tracks, if she wanted to.’
‘Does that mean you don’t think you’ll find anything?’ Ferguson asked.
Roper’s scar tissue lifted in what passed for a smile. ‘I said she’d try. I didn’t say she’d succeed.’
