A Deadly Trade by E. V. Seymour

Author:E. V. Seymour
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780008271527
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2017-08-22T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

We were ten minutes into the journey when McCallen received a call. She listened hard, eyes fixed on the road ahead. I couldn’t see her reaction. Her voice remained neutral. Then she suddenly pulled over.

‘Does anyone else know?’ she said. I couldn’t hear the reply. ‘Keep it to yourself for now… Yep, what else do you have?’ She didn’t say anything for several minutes. It seemed to me that she was getting some heavy low-down. Occasionally I’d been a bystander to telephone altercations like these. They usually kicked off when a drugs bust had gone wrong and someone was being held to account and threats made. I got the impression that McCallen was in a similar position. Finally, she chewed on her lip and said in a clipped voice, ‘No, I’m fine. Trust me… No, I don’t know how much longer…Yes, I’m sorry…Just cover me for another hour or so.’ She finished the call and, pensive, turned her gaze back into the night, started the car, stepped hard on the gas and pulled back onto the road.

‘Who was that?’ I said. She didn’t answer. I tried again.

‘Did you give errand boy the task of checking out Lygo?’

She glanced across at me. ‘Blake found out that Frank Lygo is former CIA.’

It fitted. Deep down, I’d suspected a security service connection. It explained his knowledge of safe houses and the reason he was not an established ‘face’ in organised crime circles. It explained why he wanted to get his hands on the data. More worrying, it suggested knowledge that was way above my intellect and possibly McCallen’s clearance and pay grade. It did not explain his desire to kill Dr Mary Wilding, still less his obsession with her son.

‘He left under a cloud three years ago.’

‘The sort of cloud that leads to vengeful retaliation?’

She shook her head as if my guess was as good as anybody’s. ‘Lygo’s patch was the Middle East, Iran,’ she continued slowly, no energy in her voice, as though someone had removed her batteries. ‘He had an intelligence officer high up in the Iranian regime as an asset,’ McCallen continued.

‘Sounds like a genius idea.’ For Lygo to enjoy any degree of success testified to the talented and flamboyant style of the man. Pitching to an asset was a delicate business, nothing like the crude methods I employed to force someone to get me the information I wanted. Any sortie into the Middle East was like treading on fine porcelain in the fond hope it wouldn’t break.

‘It was, initially, but the officer was peddling drugs…’

‘Get found out and you wind up hanging from the nearest crane,’ I cut in. ‘Iran has one of the toughest set of laws on drugs.’

‘Officially, yes. In reality it depends who’s doing the dealing. Certain elements in power collaborate with the drugs trade.’

My political knowledge was sketchy, but my geography wasn’t bad. Iran bordered the Caspian Sea. One of the biggest exporters of caviar, it was no big stretch to imagine smuggling out other commodities.

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