Page 62 of The Shadow Friends

“She and Mr. Estrada.”

Rodrigo, thought Maggie. The man they’d met at the Stone Coast Conference. She remembered the tension, as crackling as static, between Ingrid and Rodrigo. And now the two of them were abroad and traveling together. She glanced at Lloyd and saw his shattered expression. His wife was with another man. Of course he was shattered.

But there was a bigger picture here, and too many puzzle pieces that Maggie could not fit together. Dmitry’s photo had led her and Lloyd to the Amsterdam bus stop, which had led them to these two killers lying at their feet. The Vory were underworld thugs, loyal only to each other, but available for hire. It was clear whom they’d worked for.

But who are you working for, Ingrid?

Chapter 23

“I used to envy you,” said Lloyd. “There I was, trapped behind a desk in Langley, while the four of you were out there in the field, slinking down alleys. Picking locks and chatting up assets. Surviving on your wits. But after tonight . . .” He shook his head. “I realize I never could have hacked it. I would have ended up dead somewhere. Or locked up in a foreign prison.”

They were huddled on the sofa in her hotel room, both of them calming their nerves with sips of the whisky she’d found in the room’s minibar. It was only an eight-year-old scotch, but under the circumstances, it was serviceable enough, and they were drinking it neat. They needed it full strength, to regain their equilibrium and to celebrate the fact they’d survived the night. Although they should not have. They’d been careless and stupid, and for that, Maggie had only herself to blame. Lloyd was just a neophyte, and he couldn’t be expected to perform in the field, but she’d had decades of experience, experience that had failed her tonight. Her old skills were slipping. Once, she might have been a decent operative, but that Maggie had gone soft in her old age. She could not afford to screw up again. Not if they had any chance of tracking down Ingrid.

“The field isn’t for the fainthearted,” she said. “You got a taste of that tonight.”

“And I was useless, Maggie. Worse than useless. You tried to warn me, and I led us straight into an ambush.” He dropped his head in his hands. “Utterly, completely useless.”

“Lloyd.” She grasped his arm. That arm could expertly wield a chef’s knife and a spatula, but those skills were not of much use outside his well-equipped kitchen. “This is all new to you. Don’t beat yourself up over what happened.”

“It’s not how I imagined it would be. Not how I thought I’d perform.”

She set down her empty glass and got up to search the hotel minibar for something else. If they were going to do a full postmission debriefing, they’d need more than just one round. She found small bottles of gin and vodka, demi-bottles of red wine and white wine. She took them all out and brought them back to the sofa.

“I imagined myself as a sort of James Bond,” he said. “It all seems ridiculous now.”

She opened the mini bottle of gin and emptied it into Lloyd’s glass. Emptied the bottle of vodka into hers. “James Bond is ridiculous.”

At that, Lloyd smiled. Finally a smile, but it was a small one, and it soon faded. He looked down at the gin in his glass, his eyebrows knitted in an expression that was almost one of pain. “I need to tell you something, Maggie. I didn’t want to share it with that man Marcus, but you should probably know. Because it might mean something. In fact, it probably does mean something.”

“What is it?”

“He said Dmitry Surikov defected twenty years ago. That he walked into the US consulate in Naples and confessed to being a Russian illegal.”

“And?”

“Twenty years ago, Ingrid was sent to Naples.”

Maggie’s gaze sharpened on him. “I thought she was stationed in Rome.”

“She was. Her cover firm was in Rome. The so-called Johnson-Baron Ad Agency. It was all CIA, down to its basement. Ingrid’s title was secretary to the director.” He paused. “She was an excellent secretary.”

“I have no doubt.” Knowing Ingrid. “So why did they send her to Naples?”

“I don’t know. I only know that she and I were supposed to go to Marseille together. It was our wedding anniversary, and we’d booked a holiday on the sea. We planned to gorge on fish and mussels and, you know, do what happy couples do on their anniversary. But at the last minute, she had to cancel because she was called to Naples. She couldn’t tell me why. For a whole month, I didn’t see her. And when she finally got home to our flat in Rome, she was absolutely mum about the whole affair. Which I understood, of course. Nature of the job and all. But I always wondered about that month in Naples. What she was doing there. Why it all happened so suddenly. Then tonight, when Marcus told us that Surikov gave himself up by walking into our consulate in Naples, I realized that must be why Ingrid was called there. To deal with the intelligence windfall. A Russian sleeper, ready to spill all his secrets, in exchange for a new life.” He looked at Maggie. “That must be the connection between Ingrid and Surikov. She would have been his handler, his protector. She would have helped him forge his new identity.”

“But that was years ago. He would have been passed on to other handlers. Why get involved with him now?”

“I don’t know. I’m not even sure if my theory holds water. But it’s the only thing that might tie Ingrid to this whole mess.” His head dropped into his hands and he rubbed back his hair, leaving it in wispy gray tufts. “She’s no longer with the Agency, so what is she doing here? And why keep it a secret from me?”

From all of us, thought Maggie. She knew there were valid reasons for secrecy, if lives, or the success of a mission, were at risk. Even among the five of them, all with high-level clearance, secrets remained. Secrets they would guard to the grave. Where Lloyd and I might well have ended up tonight.

Her phone buzzed. She glanced at the caller’s number and answered: “Hey.”

“You both feeling better?” said Declan.

“Still recovering. We’ve finished all the scotch in the minibar, and we’ve moved on to the gin and vodka.”

“You’re going to need more than vodka when you hear what we found out since you called.”