Chapter 24: Encounters

Henry breathed a sigh of relief as he cleared the last of the checkpoints. He looked about curiously. So this was the headquarters of MI6! He had met MI6 operatives whilst in Iraq and exchanged information with them, but this was his first official contact with the legendary service.

The phone call had come out of the blue. A friendly woman, identifying herself as Mrs. Pritchard, had asked whether he would be kind enough to agree to a short interview. Something had come up about his service in Iraq and they needed detailed information about some of the operations he had conducted. Nothing to worry about for him, she assured him.

Not being the trusting kind, he had asked whether he should bring along a legal adviser. The woman assured him once more that this was not about his actions, but rather about background information to which he might have become privy. With a sigh, he had agreed to visit their headquarters.

He was waiting in the foyer for Mrs. Pritchard to pick him up when he suddenly heard an excited voice coming from the left.

"Capitan Costa? Is that really you?"

An icy feeling washed over Henry. He had not heard or used that name in over seven years. It had been his nom de guerre back in Peru and Colombia, before he slipped further into illegality and became simply 'Cap'. Warily, he looked to the left.

"Yes, it's you! Don't you remember me? George! George Lowell! Peru '98!"

Henry's eyes went wide. George Lowell. The American diplomat who had been abducted by the Sendero Luminosa. They had freed him at the cost of killing a score of guerilleros and Henry receiving his machete cut for a souvenir.

"Well, hello, George," he answered, a guarded smile on his face. The man owed him big time, so this could not be bad. "How have you been all those years?"

"Good, thanks to you and your men. You work for MI6?"

Henry shook his head. "Heavens, no! I'm a retired officer. I'm just a visitor."

"Oh, stupid me! I won't pry. Say, I never had a chance to properly thank you back then. Are you staying in London?"

"I live in the vicinity," Henry answered, still reluctant to volunteer too much information.

"Could we, like, have dinner? Dinner and a few drinks? I'm staying at the Sheraton Belgravia."

"Sure," Henry answered. This could not hurt, and it might be useful to catch up on what had happened to the people involved. A vague idea formed in Henry's head. Larry had been involved in that particular operation. Perhaps Lowell could give Henry some information. "Should I just pick you up at your hotel?"

"That would be nice. How about at eight?"

"All right, I'll be there. If you can't make it, leave a note at the reception desk."

"No, no, I'm free tonight, Capi..." Lowell paused. "Say, I thought you were Costa Rican?"

Henry smiled. "That was my other life. My name's Henry Ruiz-Costa."

"You could have fooled me. Sorry, have to hurry now. I can't wait for us to get together tonight! See you!"

"See you!" Henry answered and watched Lowell as he hurried towards the exit.

He had no time to reflect on this chance meeting because a woman materialised in front of him, holding out her hand.

"Colonel Ruiz-Costa? I'm Louise Pritchard. Thank you so much for coming. If you will follow me?"

She led him to a bank of lifts. They rode upstairs to the third storey where Mrs. Pritchard showed him into her office. He took the offered seat in front of her desk.

"Would you like some coffee, Colonel?"

He looked at the huge coffee maker and grinned inwardly. That thing had more computing power than a space shuttle. Mrs. Pritchard pushed a number of buttons, following a menu on the colour display. The machine made a lot of grinding, gurgling and farting noises before a coffee-like fluid squirted into a white china cup. Mrs. Pritchard gave him the cup and sat down in her own chair.

Henry pointed at the coffee maker. "Q branch?" he quipped.

"Yes, it doubles as a satellite link," Mrs. Pritchard laughed. She had a snorting laugh, like Sandra Bullock in the Miss Congeniality movie.

"Impressive," Henry grinned. He tasted the coffee. Not completely bad he had to concede. "Now, how can I help you?"

"Straight to the point, Colonel," she laughed, snorting again, "just like your file indicates. Well, there are a few open questions with regards to the operations you conducted in Iraq. We need to have you fill us in on some details."

She grilled him for three hours, on each and every assignment he and his small unit had performed. Henry saw through her intentions after half an hour. She was creating a smoke screen of questions to hide her real agenda.

The real agenda was the ambush that had killed two of his men and left him wounded. He knew this because she asked about it in far more detail compared with the other events. She also grilled him about his relationship with Firouze.

He was very candid in his answers, knowing that he had not done anything against regulations. He told her the whole story – the first meeting at Taraqi's house, the chance meeting at the consulate and the one-night stand in the Sheraton.

In the end, Mrs. Pritchard thanked him for his time and patience. She escorted him back to the foyer and saw him through the exit controls.

Standing outside, he looked back at the building and shook his head. It would have been nice of Pritchard to tell him what all this had been about he mused, but then again, you never get the beef from spooks.

He called the house and told Milena that he would stay in London overnight. He found a department store where he purchased a small bag, a change of underwear, a shirt and basic toiletries for the night. Whilst he was well-to-do he nevertheless saw no point in staying at some of the plush hotels in Whitehall. It took just two phone calls to find a simple room at a simple hotel in Kensington. The price was still outrageous for the dingy, ill-appointed room that was facing a busy street. He dropped off his small bag and found a nearby cinema to kill time until his rendezvous with George Lowell.

The dinner at Wilton's had been excellent. George Lowell had been sceptical about eating English, but Henry had convinced him to give it a try. Now they sat at their table savouring Port wine and cheese.

"So you were in Iraq," George once again started the shop talk. "Funny to think we could have met there. I was mostly working in the Green Zone in Baghdad. But now that I know your real name, I remember it coming up once or twice."

Henry grinned sardonically. If George had ever worked for the State Department, he had changed employers long ago. It all made sense. The frantic activity when he was abducted from his apartment in Lima, the money-is-no-issue attitude of the embassy people and the tight security when they delivered him back to the Americans.

He was a spook, CIA, of that Henry was sure and the Americans had been scared shitless that he might spill the beans to the Shining Path. That's why they paid over one-hundred-fifty grand to Henry's team to get him back. And that's why Lowell had been at the MI6 headquarters this morning.

"Yes, I let them snare me into going there," he answered. "Well, that's over. I'm a respectable citizen now. And you? Still in the diplomatic service?"

George grinned back. "Couldn't fool you, could I? I'm a pencil pusher these days. Analyst they call it. Meaning I'm too much of a klutz to work in the field."

Henry remembered George when they made it back to Lima. Henry's first impression of Lowell had been that of a wimp. But the man had not flinched once when they dressed the bad burns he had received at the hands of his captors. Under that klutzy, soft exterior was a man Henry could respect.

"What about those other guys from the Lima office? How are they doing?"

"Mostly doing good. Tim Holloway retired last year and moved Berlin. He's got a family there, sort of." He seemed to remember something. "You still remember James Mason?"

"The freelancer, right? He's still working in the trade?" Henry asked casually. Inside, he was wired now. James Mason was Larry Holmes.

"Stupid ass got himself killed! Got mixed up in a kidnapping and murder conspiracy back home. Tried a double-cross and was killed by one of his own hired guns."

Henry made himself shake his head. "Well, he was a shady character, wasn't he? Who did it?"

"Blow me if I know! We got involved of course, because he had worked for us on and off. All we know is that James and one of his men were killed by the third man. So was the instigator of the plot, the husband of the kidnapping victim. The Fibbies and the Atlanta cops gave us their files. It's depressing. They have zero physical evidence. No hair, no fibres, no DNA, no prints. Just two stiffs and the kidnapped family. They couldn't or wouldn't finger him either."

"Wait, you're not talking about the Maxwell kidnapping, are you?"

Henry was proud of his acting. He had inflected just the right touch of astonishment and excitement.

"How do you know about that?" George asked. His surprise had to be real.

"Josephine Maxwell is my fiancée," Henry stated calmly. "Of course, she and the girls told me all about that kidnapping. But the guy's name had been Larry, Larry Holmes. That's what the cops and the FBI told Josie."

"Well, we knew him as James Mason when his finger prints scored in our database. We just didn't feel like telling the Fibbies. The director thought it was kind of embarrassing to have one of our irregulars involved in a stateside conspiracy. But how did you get to know the woman? She's a millionaire many times over."

Henry made himself grin smugly. "I may be an ex-mercenary, but my cousin owns an investment bank in the City. I met her at one of his informal barbecues out in the country when she was visiting on business."

"Jeez, the world is small, isn't it?" George marvelled.

"What I don't understand, George, they keep telling Josie that they are still following leads, you know, to find that third man."

"It's bullshit, Henry. They have nothing to go on and even if the guy turned himself in today and confessed, they couldn't get a conviction. James screwed up. He must have hired a professional hit man to do the job on your fiancée and when that guy switched sides, he snuffed James and his sidekick just like that." George snipped his fingers. "Very professional clean-up. The guy dumped everything into an acid-filled barrel."

Henry's raised eyebrow indicated his need for explanation.

"Acid destroys DNA. That's why we think he was a pro. Either that or a biochemist gone bad."

"Josie calls him Cap," Henry remarked. "He seems to have been a decent chap. He saved their lives, you know?"

"Of course, they side with him," George laughed. "He saved them when he killed the two perps, for Pete's sake!"

"Well, they don't hate him," Henry admitted. "Speaking of family, are you still married to, wait, I can remember, yes, Annabeth?"

That distracted George sufficiently and he entered into a long-winded explanation why he, George Lowell, had the best wife and the best daughter in the world. Henry egged him on to continue, more to keep him away from discussing James Mason than out of real interest. He also kept the alcohol flowing to make sure that George would not remember too much about their conversation.

It was after one o'clock when Henry delivered a very drunk George Lowell to the Sheraton after promising him a visit if ever he was in the Washington area. Smiling smugly, Henry thought that he might really visit the States now, but that his destination would be a few hundred miles to the South, in Atlanta.

A few days later, Henry was driving along the small road that was leading from Maidenhead to Matcham. Tammy was sitting in the passenger seat and they talked about their plans for the weekend. Megan and Patricia were going to Nottingham for a weekend of rowing matches and they had dropped them off at the boat club with the rest of the team.