An Agent of Deceit by Chris Jones

Author:Chris Jones
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780230752672
Publisher: Mantle
Published: 2011-04-30T23:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER NINE

No one could get you in the air, thought Lock. No one could point out your mistakes. No one could politely criticize your performance. Best of all, no one could treat you with that embarrassed delicacy that suggested you were already incurable.

It was only a brief recess. Four hours from Paris to Moscow in the sun above the clouds. Then at Sheremetyevo airport he would switch his BlackBerry back on and it would all start again. The calls from Cayman, from Cyprus, from Gibraltar, everyone nervous about those people from Ikertu; emails from Kesler and Griffin about the horrors of Paris and what on earth we do next; maybe for good measure a call or two from a journalist late to the party. He wondered which had been the worst moment of this relentlessly grim week: being unpicked piece by piece by the acid Mr Lionel Greene, QC; learning from his secretary that Malin had asked to see him immediately on his return; or being told by the dependable and normally untroubled Herr Rast, the oldest and calmest of Lock's cohorts in Switzerland, that the Zurich prosecutor had been asking him questions about Faringdon and Langland. Probably the call from Rast, by a shade. Greene had done his worst, and at least Malin was the devil he knew; Swiss prosecutors, however, were a new and frightening apparition.

God, these Queen's Counsels were good. As he looked at the virgin world of sunshine and deep blue and pure white outside his window it occurred to him that he had been in awe of Greene, and that even while he was being savaged a small part of him had been held rapt by his agility, his utter sureness. Lock wondered whether, in another life, he could ever have been that good. He wasn't sure he had the appetite to scoop all the meat from a man's bones as Greene had done to him, like a surgeon eating a crab.

There were faint reasons for hope; Kesler, at least, was forcing himself to be optimistic. Lock may have failed to convince anyone that he was an oil tycoon but Tourna had failed to demonstrate that he had been defrauded. Paris was unlikely to be the end of it by any means. Kesler had also reminded Lock that it was not his plausibility that was on trial, which was just as well, and that none of it would be reported in the press. And that was the greatest relief.

But Malin. Christ. Lock wondered how much he would know. Presumably Kesler would report how the hearing had gone, and it was in his interests to spare the direst details. But that wouldn't be like Kesler. He could feel the shame of it all rising from his chest into his throat.

Still, at least it was done, and he wouldn't have to do it again. Malin would be angry, that was certain, but there was little he could do. Little he could say, perhaps, since hadn't he, after

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