Fire Hawk by Geoffrey Archer Page A

they kept banging into things,’ he answered facetiously. ‘I’m told they’ll heal.’
    â€˜The bastards.’ Her frown was back. ‘I simply don’t understand. Why mess you about like that if all they wanted was a hostage to swap with Salah Khalil?’
    â€˜Perhaps they thought that I knew something. Something sensitive which I wasn’t telling them.’
    She sat beside him on the bed and slipped her arm round his waist as if to give him support.
    â€˜And did you?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜Was that what your message was about? Your message to me. The BW attack?’
    Sam nodded.
    â€˜So, what was it exactly?’ She rested her head against his shoulder and asked it in an offhand way as if her interest in the matter were only peripheral. ‘What had you found out?’
    About to reply, Sam checked himself. In their years together they’d sometimes blurred the service’s rules on case confidentiality, but their relationship was different now. Different because she’d made it so.
    â€˜We can’t talk about this, Chrissie, you know that.’
    She detached herself from him. She’d understood the point he was making.
    â€˜No. You’re right. I was just being curious. I mean, it
was
me you addressed the message to. And I
am
involved in the case. I mean, I’m here aren’t I?’
    â€˜Yes.’
    But
why
was she here? What did she want from him?
    She thrust her chin forward. ‘There is one thing you can tell me,’ she said, more abrasively.
    â€˜Oh?’
    â€˜Yes. Why did you have to give my number to your courier? Why not one of the unlisted lines at Vauxhall Cross?’
    He looked towards the window. The truth was he didn’t fully know why. ‘I only had a couple of minutes to think. It was in case the German got stopped. I thought it best not to give one of the official numbers. Yours just came into my head.’
    Chrissie’s look was sceptical. ‘Just came into your head,’ she repeated doubtfully. Then, lowering her voice, she continued. ‘Martin took the call, you know. Not me. I was out.’
    â€˜Ah. How awkward for you.’ There’d always been the risk of that.
    She stood up from the bed and crossed to the window. She opened it and lit a cigarette, blowing the smoke outside.
    â€˜I was at the gym,’ she told him over her shoulder. ‘It was in the evening.’ She sucked in a lungful of nicotine then expelled it into the cool morning air. ‘Martin went ballistic when I got home. Thought the whole thing was a stunt. Some little billet-doux from you to me, in code.’
    â€˜Ah, yes.’ He shivered at the thought that Kessler might have binned the message.
    Chrissie had her back to him still. There was something he didn’t want to ask but knew he had to.
    â€˜How
are
things with Martin?’
    She turned slowly, then leaned against the window sill.
    â€˜I made my choice back in midsummer, Sam,’ she said in a small voice. ‘I’m sorry, but it was the right choice.’
    There it was. Quite unequivocal.
    â€˜Ah. Well bully for you, then.’
    He cast his mind back to the day in June when she’d asked him to meet her in the middle of Barnes Common. A meeting in the open for once, at which she’d said her husband had found out about their affair and had told her she had to choose. A brief and bitter encounter, witnessed from afar by curious dog-walkers and, Sam had discovered a few minutes later, by Martin Kessler himself, watching from a car.
    He hadn’t seen Chrissie since that day. Not until this morning.
    Sam stood up again, trying to ignore the protests from his shins. He looked down at his suitcase. ‘I shall now get dressed,’ he announced determinedly.
    Chrissie took a last puff on the cigarette then threw it out of the window. Pulling her mouth into a tight smile, she came towards him and slipped her arms round