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  “Why them in particular?”

  “For their German links. He needed people the BND would believe in.”

  The Bundesnachrichtendienst was the German intelligence service.

  “Do me the smallest of favours and don’t treat me like an idiot. I meant why people in homes, in hospitals? Out of circulation?”

  “Safer. He didn’t want anyone who was going to make waves. You know, win the lottery or something. Get in the papers. Draw attention.”

  “Then what about the younger one? Why doesn’t she fit the pattern?”

  “He wanted a live one. Obviously.”

  Her eyes flashed danger. “What’s obvious about it?”

  “I didn’t mean obvious, I just meant I’ve been thinking about it.” Jesus. “He wanted someone he could demonstrate was live and kicking, if he needed to.”

  “Like when? How did this scam work? If it was a scam. The jury’s still out.”

  “It worked on old-school principles,” Bachelor said. “The kind that mean, if you’ve got an agent in place, you don’t put them on parade. Hess was known to the BND, of course he was. He defected, after all. Ancient history, but still. So if he claimed, I don’t know, regret, or willingness to make amends now the Fatherland’s reunited, he’d have found a willing ear. He was a persuasive man. That’s how he survived doing what he did. So anyway, he made his contact, and yes, mea culpa, mea culpa—I should have known he did that.”

  If he’d been hoping Diana Taverner would wave his guilt away, he was disappointed.

  “Anyway.” Moving briskly on. “Having made contact, he convinces whoever, let’s call him Hans, he convinces Hans he’s built up a network of people prepared to pass on whatever titbits their professional lives offer. The same kind of thing we’d be interested in ourselves. Now, I know you’re going to say, ‘But they’re on our side’—”

  Because it was his firmly held principle that when trying to seduce, you bowled the odd full toss.

  “For god’s sake, John. Who do you think you’re talking to?”

  For information purposes, everyone was an enemy.

  “Sorry. So anyway, Hans takes the bait, and in return for a small amount of money, peanuts, he’s acquired a string. But strictly sight unseen, of course, because he can’t go round kicking tyres, can he? Not with a stable of spooks. All he can do is give thanks, open a bank account so Dieter can feed the fledglings, and sit back and wait for product.”

  “Which is what?”

  “That’s the beauty of it. Hess would’ve claimed to have long-term agents in place, the kind that take years of cultivation. So there’s not going to be major product. Not right away. Which keeps Hans quiet and doesn’t worry Dieter one jot, because by the time his debts fall due, and his agents are expected to be coughing up the proverbial fairy dust, well, he’ll be dead. He knows how ill he is. He’s not expecting a miracle recovery.”

  Diana Taverner’s eyebrows were drawn to a point. Partly she was assessing Bachelor’s story; partly his demeanour. He seemed to believe his tale, but then, he was invested in it—either Hess’s list was the harmless petty larceny Bachelor was selling, or the old fool had really had been up to something, in which case it had been happening on Bachelor’s watch. And while her warnings to him about prison time had been for effect, her other threats had been real. Taverner had a strict policy about mistakes. She was prepared to accept her subordinates made them so long as they were prepared to take the blame. She didn’t like finding other people’s messes on her desk. From a distance, they might look like her own.

  On the other hand, surrendering the list was a point in his favour. He could have pretended he’d never found it, and worked up a legend to explain Hess’s secret funds. Along with her policy on mistakes, Taverner had one on cover-ups: provided they came with full deniability, she could live with them.

  He’d stopped talking.

  She said, “And all this for a few extra quid.”

  “Don’t discount it. We don’t exactly bed them down in clover—”

  “Don’t talk to me, John. Talk to the Minister. And she can talk to the Treasury.”

  “Well, quite. But anyway, a few extra quid, a couple of grand a year, makes the difference to Dieter between a nice bottle of wine and a supermarket offer.” Bachelor paused, having been struck by a vision of his own future. Where was he? Yes: “And besides . . . He was a game old bird. He probably enjoyed it.”

  “Maybe so,” she said.

  The moment’s silence they shared was more of a wake for Dieter Hess than the evening in the pub had been.

  She said, “Okay. You screwed up, which I’m not forgetting, but for the moment, no harm done. Hans’ll no doubt come looking for his strays once he’s sure Dieter’s safely forgotten, so Hess’s phantoms are on your watch list. I don’t want to read about various shut-ins being smothered in their sleep when a vengeful BND spook finds he’s been conned.”

  Bachelor didn’t reply. He was staring at a fixed point in space that was either high above London or somewhere in the back of his own mind. Lady Di scowled. If anyone was going to fall prey to reverie in her office, it was her.

  “Still with me?”

  “There’s another possibility.”

  “Enlighten me.”

  “You’re right. Hans, whoever he is, will wait for the ashes to settle before he comes looking for Dieter’s lost sheep. Which gives us a window of opportunity.”

  Lady Di leaned back. “Go on.”

  “This younger girl, the one Hess must have meant for show . . . What if we turn her?”

  “You want to recruit her?”

  “Why not? If she’s suitable . . . We run the usual background checks, make sure she’s not an idiot or a nutjob, but if she fits the asset profile, why not? Hans already thinks she’s on his side, and she doesn’t even know he exists. We’d have a ready-made double. How much of a coup is that?”

  “Running an op against a friendly?”

  “It wouldn’t be an op as such. If Hans is planning a recruitment drive on our soil, it serves him right if he gets his fingers burnt. Don’t pretend you don’t like the idea.”

  As far as Diana Taverner was concerned, she’d pretend whatever she liked. But she allowed the idea to percolate while she told Bachelor to leave, and he departed to float round Regent’s Park, wondering whether he’d done enough to save his career.

  Recruit one of Hess’s phantoms . . . It had a nice circularity to it. Was the kind of scheme which could become a case study, a model for future strategists to ponder; how to seize an opportunity, turn it into a triumph. Backdoor views into other states’ intelligence services were always welcome. Like having the chance to rummage through your best friend’s cupboards. An opportunity you’d publicly deplore, but so long as they didn’t find out about it, you were never going to pass up.

  And as so often with Second-Desk decisions, it was the money tilted the balance. When the money side of it occurred to her, a slow smile spread across Diana Taverner’s face; a smile that had been known to draw men her way, until they got close enough to notice that it never reached her eyes. Hans had been paying Hess to maintain his network; he’d be disappointed when he discovered nine tenths of this network was fake, but if he thought the girl was genuine, he’d continue paying her upkeep. Which meant the Park wouldn’t have to. A detail that would bring her a standing ovation once she ran it past the Limitations Committee.

  She had Bachelor paged, and gave him the go-ahead.

  ♠

  The waves were mostly froth: great fat spumes hurling themselves at the Cobb’s sides, then spitting as high as they could reach before collapsing back into the roiling puddle of the sea. Again and again the waves did this, as if reminding the Cobb that, while it might have graced this harbour for hundreds of years, the sea had been around significantly longer, and would prevail
in the long run.

  That particular scenario wasn’t troubling Hannah Weiss, however. Mostly, she was enjoying the figure she must cast to anyone watching from the quay. With a red windcheater and jeans in place of a black cloak, and her dark-blonde hair pulled into the briefest of knots at the back of her head, she was a far cry from Meryl Streep, but still: there was no denying the inherent romance in the scene. The waves splashed against the stone, and the grey sky was tinged with purple on the horizon, threatening rain later, and here she was; lingering on the stone arm Lyme extends into the sea, curled protectively round its bobbing fleet of boats.

  And she was here with romantic purpose, of course. The man who had dropped into her life a mere fortnight earlier had brought her here, or perhaps summoned her was a better way of putting it; or perhaps—to be blunt—had sent her the rail ticket: first class return (big spender!), a cottage for the weekend, and he’d join her, within an hour of her arrival, on the Cobb. Sorry they couldn’t travel together, but he’d explain all soonest. Clive Tremain, he was called. He wore a tie all week and polos all weekend, enjoyed country walks and well-earned pub meals after, and was going to do his damnedest to borrow a dog for this particular mini-break, so they could throw balls on a beach, and watch it jump across waves to collect them.

  He’d turned up at a party two weeks earlier, an old friend of an old friend of the party-giver, and had cornered Hannah in the kitchen for an hour, hung avidly on her every word, then wooed her number out of her before mysteriously disappearing. She’d been on tenterhooks for forty-eight hours, which was her upper limit for tenterhooks, before he’d used it. Since then they’d been on three dates and he’d improved on each occasion, though had yet to make any significant moves in a bedward direction. And then came the weekend-in-Lyme-Regis idea, which struck Hannah as perfect, definitely one up on any invitation any of her girlfriends had yet received. Clive Tremain. A bit sticky-looking at first sight—sticky-looking as in, might just have a stick stuck up him—but that didn’t detract from his looks. He had the air of one who’d taken orders in the past, and might not be above dishing them out in the future.

  And now here he came, for this surely must be him—a man approaching the Cobb from the road. Wearing a black overcoat which la Streep herself might not have turned her nose up, and bareheaded, and on the Cobb itself now, near enough for a pang of disappointment to reach her, because it wasn’t Clive; was a much older man . . . She turned, glad she hadn’t embarrassed herself with a wave, and keen to resume her solitary vigil over the sea, striking just the right attitude for the real Clive to admire, once he arrived, which he surely would do any minute.

  “Ms. Weiss?”

  She turned.

  “Hannah, yes?”

  And that was all it took for her to know that Clive Tremain wasn’t coming to collect her; that Clive Tremain wasn’t showing up in her life ever again. That Clive Tremain, in fact, had never existed at all.

  ♠

  Hannah Weiss. Born ’91, parents Joe and Esme—such a lovely name John Bachelor had to say it again, for the sheer pleasure of the sound: Esme—née Klein, the rest of whose family were scattered across Germany like so many seedlings: Munich mostly, but enough of a contingent in Berlin for there always to be a cousinly bunk for Hannah to bed down in when, as so often during the noughties, she had spent summer vacations there; enjoying the feeling of being truly European, with a language under her belt, and friendly faces to speak it to. Then a degree at Exeter, a proper one: history. And then the Civil Service exam, and now a first-rung job at BIS, which John Bachelor made a bit of a production out of not being sure what it stood for: something to do with business, I’m guessing, Hannah, yes? Something clever to do with business? He was a different man today, John Bachelor, having donned handler’s garb, which for Hannah he had decided meant Favourite Uncle.

  “Business, Innovation and Skills.”

  “The department for,” he said. “Well done. Very well done.”

  They were in a pub off Lyme’s main street, the one that curled uphill in picturesque fashion, and Bachelor had already laid a world of apology at Hannah’s feet for what was obviously unforgivable—what couldn’t possibly be countenanced for any reason other than the one he was about to produce—and had commenced wooing her with the best the pub had to offer, which was a not-bad prawn risotto and a decent Chablis. The rocky part, he hoped—if only the first of many rocky parts—was over, because she had after all listened to him when he’d explained that Clive wasn’t going to be able to make it actually, but that he himself would very much like a quiet word.

  Laying that snare for her—the word was honeytrap—was risky, but Bachelor had deemed it necessary; partly to remove her from her usual sphere, because recruitment was best done in a neutral zone, one in which the object of desire had nobody, nothing, to rely on but her own judgement. But it was partly, too—though this could never be spoken—to establish a certain willingness in advance: the object of affection was here to be wooed, true, but the end result was already flagged up. The atmosphere had prepped a “yes.” The food was warm; the wine was chilled. Outside, rain danced brightly on the road and pavements and the roofs of parked cars, for the weather Hannah had watched approaching from the Cobb had arrived to complete the scene.

  He would like to buy her lunch, he had explained, to make up for Clive’s absence. And afterwards, she could head back to London—first class—or, if she preferred, make use of the cottage Clive had booked. Bachelor himself, he hastily added, would not be included.

  “There’s something going on, isn’t there?”

  He could scarcely deny this.

  “You’re not planning on drugging me for sex or anything, are you? You don’t look the type, I must say.”

  He was grateful for this, until she added: “Too wrecked looking, really.” She’d looked back towards the sea then, and the purple-fringed cloud in the decreasing distance. “I take self-defence classes, by the way.”

  “Very wise,” said Bachelor, who knew she didn’t.

  “Okay.” This had been abrupt. “If that sod’s not coming, you’ll have to do. Buy me lunch.”

  Over which he asked her about herself and her family, and checked her answers against what he already knew, which was almost everything.

  “And why did you stop going to Germany, actually, Hannah? Fall out with the cousins?”

  “Well, I haven’t stopped going,” she said. “I just haven’t been in a while, that’s all. I was in the States one year—”

  Coast to coast, Bachelor mentally supplied; a six-week road-trip with three friends from Uni. Hannah had split with her half of the male couple within days of arriving home.

  “—and just been really busy since, but I’ll certainly be going back next time I get a sniff of a chance at a decent break. They work you awfully hard, you know.”

  “Oh, I’m sure it’ll get easier after a while.”

  ♠

  Later, when the rain had passed over, and the sun was making a valiant attempt to regain control, they took a footpath leading out of town, and Bachelor explained a little more of the circumstances that had brought him to her.

  “So you mean . . . What, this man stole my identity?”

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  “But he wasn’t racking up huge debts or anything?”

  “No, nothing like that. He was using your name and your background, that’s all, to convince some people that he had recruited you as what we like to call an asset.”

  “A spy.”

  “Not really. Well, sort of,” Bachelor amended, when he noticed a certain shine in her eyes.

  “So that’s what you are too. You’re a spy.”

  “Yes.”

  “And Clive too.”

  “Clive’s not really his name.”

  “Will I see him again?”

  “I s
ee no reason why not,” John Bachelor lied.

  But there was something in her attitude that hinted that Clive, anyway, had already been written out of her future.

  “So what do I do about it?” she asked. “Do I have to give evidence in court? Something like that?”

  “Good heavens, no. Besides, he’s dead now.”

  She nodded wisely.

  “Lord, don’t think that. He had a bad heart. He was unwell for a long time. It was only afterwards that we—I—found out what he’d been up to.”

  “So nobody knew.”

  “That’s right.”

  “And nobody would still know—I mean, I wouldn’t—if you hadn’t just told me.”

  “That’s right.”

  In the very best of cases, the object of affection wooed herself.

  “So that means you want me to do something for you, doesn’t it? I mean, you’re hardly telling me all this just to keep me informed. Spies keep secrets. They don’t go round blabbing them to all and sundry.”

  “They’re certainly not supposed to,” he said, thinking of JK Coe.

  They were under trees, and a sudden gust of wind shook loose some hoarded rain, sprinkling their heads. This made Hannah laugh, and Bachelor had a sudden pang—when she did this, she seemed about thirteen, which was far too young to be wooed or honeytrapped; far too young to be recruited. But when her laughter stopped, the look she directed at him was old enough that he shook those thoughts away.

  “You want me to make it real, don’t you? To become what he pretended I was. Except you want me to do this while really being on your side.”