Chapters (124)
- Cover
- About the Author
- Acclaim for Frank Gardner’s Luke Carlton thrillers
- Also by Frank Gardner
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- 6
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- 11
- 12
- 13
- 14
- 15
- 16
- 17
- 18
- 19
- 20
- 21
- 22
- 23
- 24
- 25
- 26
- 27
- 28
- 29
- 30
- 31
- 32
- 33
- 34
- 35
- 36
- 37
- 38
- 39
- 40
- 41
- 42
- 43
- 44
- 45
- 46
- 47
- 48
- 49
- 50
- 51
- 52
- 53
- 54
- 55
- 56
- 57
- 58
- 59
- 60
- 61
- 62
- 63
- 64
- 65
- 66
- 67
- 68
- 69
- 70
- 71
- 72
- 73
- 74
- 75
- 76
- 77
- 78
- 79
- 80
- 81
- 82
- 83
- 84
- 85
- 86
- 87
- 88
- 89
- 90
- 91
- 92
- 93
- 94
- 95
- 96
- 97
- 98
- 99
- 100
- 101
- 102
- 103
- 104
- 105
- 106
- 107
- 108
- 109
- 110
- 111
- 112
- 113
- 114
- 115
- Epilogue
- Acknowledgements
- THIS IS JUST THE BEGINNING
Luke gave her an appraising look, noticing for the first time the curve of her figure beneath her navy-blue jacket and skirt. Mentally, he shook himself. Stay professional, Carlton. ‘No,’ he replied, quickly adding, ‘I mean yes. Absolutely. No, I don’t have plans and, yes, we should do that. Go for a drink.’ Hardly smooth. What was the matter with him? ‘Vauxhall Tavern?’
She raised a quizzical eyebrow. ‘You’re being ironic, right, Luke?’ He wasn’t. ‘No one from this place goes there. It’s just too obvious. Think about it, it’s the closest bloody pub to SIS headquarters! No, I’m thinking that new wine bar on the river by Battersea Power Station. Caravan or something.’
‘Works for me.’
‘Good,’ she said briskly. ‘I’ll just go and grab my coat. Looks like it’s still drizzling outside.’
They didn’t get past the foyer on the ground floor.
‘Jenny Li, Luke Carlton? I’m from the Chief’s office. I’ve been sent by Brenda to fetch you.’ It was an eager young man, rather out of breath, as if he had just run down several flights of stairs instead of taking the lift. ‘C wants to see you both now. In his office.’ As an afterthought, he added apologetically, ‘Sorry to interrupt your evening.’
Sir Adam Keeling had presided over some notable successes in his time – getting agents ‘upstream’ into ISIS, cultivating a handful of human informants inside Iran’s suspect nuclear industry. But today, Luke knew, would have been an exceptionally awkward one for the Chief. Having to tell the PM, the foreign secretary and half the cabinet that contrary to the way the situation had looked, contrary to all the snippets of raw intel pointing towards the Kremlin, this deliberate release of a deadly pathogen was quite possibly not the work of the Russian government after all. So now Luke was concerned. What did it mean to be summoned to the Chief’s office at the end of the day? It wasn’t going to be an invitation to cocktails, that was for certain.
They were ushered down the corridor, past the framed photographs of royal visits, into the carpeted inner sanctum, with its paintings on the walls and all those souvenirs from foreign intelligence agencies: a carpet, a curved dagger, an incense burner and, bizarrely, a carved seagull.
‘Welcome, both. This is art,’ announced the Chief, abruptly, the moment they walked in.