A Spy's Life by Porter Henry

Author:Porter, Henry [Porter, Henry]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction - Espionage
ISBN: 1596880198
Publisher: Hachette UK
Published: 2004-10-29T13:00:00+00:00

18

VIGO’S MAP

After a while Harriet and Robin went upstairs. Harland returned to the little office to begin a memorandum for Jaidi. It was a laconic affair which, if anything, underplayed the sabotage theory, although he did mention that the FBI had made unspecified discoveries concerning the electronics systems of the plane. The rest concerned the pictures of Lipnik whom he assumed was the man that Jaidi referred to as the ‘quantum enemy’. He asked the Secretary-General to expand on his phrase for, as far as he knew, Lipnik had only one other identity – the one assumed after the staged assassination. He gave a hint or two about the evidence to be gleaned from a close examination of both pictures. He ended the note by saying that he was continuing his inquiries in Eastern Europe. He signed off in the hope that they would speak soon. He sent the e-mail with the photographs in an attachment, knowing that Jaidi would not concern himself with the identity of the young soldier in the background of the earlier picture.

As he was clearing up and preparing to go to bed, Harriet slipped into the office and perched, in an ancient woollen dressing-gown, on the desk beside him. Her face was scrubbed clean of make-up and glistened with moisturiser.

‘Okay,’ she said in a bad American accent, ‘quit stalling on me. What’ve you got?’

‘A lot,’ he said glumly, and withdrew one of the prints from the envelope and handed it to her. ‘That was taken in Bosnia. It’s the scene of a massacre. You can see Tomas in the background.’

Harriet let out a gasp. ‘God! How on earth did you get this?’

‘Griswald was carrying it on the plane. His interest was in the man in the foreground. That has to be Lipnik.’

‘So everything does connect. What are you going to do now?’

‘I’m going to go to Prague to try to trace Tomas’s mother. It’s essential that she’s found to help communicate with him. But she must also be able to explain how he came to be in Bosnia when he was just twenty years old.’

‘Who have you showed these pictures to?’

‘So far the FBI and Jaidi. Both within the last hour or so.’

‘I see.’ She paused. ‘Lipnik could reasonably assume that they were no longer in existence. After all, they took the mini-disc from you in the UN and wouldn’t have expected you to have copied it. But that doesn’t explain why Tomas was hunted down like that. It can’t have been because he was witness to that thing in Bosnia because they would have found him before. So why now? What’s the connection?

‘Maybe Tomas knew Lipnik was alive.’ Harland didn’t sound very convincing to himself. He went on to tell her about his afternoon with the man from GCHQ.

‘So the connection could be something to do with these codes.’

‘Maybe.’

‘So that means you’re still much in danger?’

‘I think not. But who knows? I haven’t got to the bottom of this thing.’

‘And you’re going to Prague.’

This came out like an accusation.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.