“What the …? What do you want, Leonard?”
“You could open the door and let me in. It’s been a long journey.”
“No, it hasn’t. You’ve been chauffeur-driven from Chiswick for forty-five minutes while you slept in the back.”
“True, but I had a disturbing dream.”
“That wasn’t a dream; that’s your life, Leonard.” She opened the door and stepped back.
“Nice to be back. Have you redecorated?” he said, clearly as unimpressed by the pine panelling and second-hand furniture as he had been when he had visited her once before, twelve months earlier. Three polystyrene heads stared blankly at him from a shelf: one bald, one in a blonde wig and the other with startling red hair.
“I’ve taken your picture down, if that’s what you mean?”
“I can get you another one,” he offered in his soft Alabaman drawl.
“I was using it as a dartboard.”
He smiled and slumped into an armchair; this was necessitated by being both overweight and out of breath from climbing the one flight of stairs outside. He was wearing a white shirt with its sleeves rolled up and a loosened green tie.
“I’m expecting an important phone call in five minutes from a new client, so make it snappy,” she said.
“Dr Rose Delavine, I expect?”
“How … how … do you know her?”
“I am her.”
“What? Leonard, you are the last person on earth who cares about personal pronouns. Although it is very tempting to call you ‘it’.” Mike was frowning under her jet-black wig.
“I am Dr Rose Delavine.”
“What?”
“Do you think I would leave London and come out here on the off-chance you were here? My office made the appointment with you.”
“Leonard, you are an utter shit!”
“Possibly … but it worked?”
“You think you’re so clever.”
“Yes, I do. It’s an anagram of Leonard de Vries, by the way. That’s pretty clever. I thought you might have worked that out, you being in intelligence?”
“You … you … I bet you didn’t think of it?”
“That’s true, but I employ great people … like you.”
“What? You are – were – the most infuriating boss.” She added, “I no longer work for you or the CIA or Five Eyes. Remember?”
It had been over three years since the accident. It had ended Mike’s career, which had begun with the CIA in Oregon and then continued with Five Eyes. Leonard was both the CIA’s head of station in London and the person who ran the joint venture between the intelligence agencies of the USA, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand (aka Five Eyes).
She was standing with her arms folded, her legs crossed at the ankles and leaning against a kitchen cabinet.
“I came to offer you a job … as a freelancer,” Leonard explained.
“I don’t want it.”
“Don’t you want to hear what it is?”
“No. You’ve wasted your time.”
“It’s desk-based.”
“Your definition of ‘desk-based’ varies considerably to mine. With you, there’s always mission creep – with the emphasis on ‘creep’.”
He rubbed his damp forehead with a handkerchief in the pause.
“You’re head of station – or the Fat Controller, as they would probably say here in the UK – surely—”
“I just want you to find one of my guys who’s gone missing,” he cut in.
“The CIA has an annual budget of billions of dollars. Why can’t you find him?”
“He was working on something that was under the radar.”
“Radar? You should have given him better equipment. Sorry, Leonard. No can do.”
He sat still for a moment – in fact, for a strangely dramatic moment – and stared up at her very-dark-brown eyes under the black Cleopatra wig. “It’s Randy.”
