Battlefield 4: Countdown to War by Peter Grimsdale Read Free Book Online

impressive arsenal of Mandarin insults; Louise knew all too well that his patience shortened with every drink. In fact, with her encouragement he had been dry for weeks, so he would have to claim a lapse. As for the frostbitten hands, well, they were shaping up into a nice swollen purple and would pass for collateral damage, proof of how useless fists were as fighting tools.
    But then he thought, who am I fooling? She’s looking at me like I’m a slow-motion car crash . And that was the way it had to be. His apparent benders were the ideal cover, no matter how much they disappointed her. No way could he share with her any of the events of the last thirty-six hours. She could never know what he did – or even his real name.
    ‘I’m afraid this is just not working for me.’ She sat down at the kitchen table, opened a compact and started to do her face.
    He tried some contrition.
    ‘Honey, truly, I know how you feel. It was a serious mistake and I’ll make it up to you.’
    No reaction. There were only so many ‘vanishing tricks’, as she’d started to call them, that any woman worth respect would tolerate, and only so many silences or shrugs. That was the price of trying to have a relationship in the field. As soon as it went anywhere, the problems started. He imagined Cutler’s wife was safely contained in some suburb off the Beltway back in Virginia, her curiosity smothered by Prozac and the belief that there was something patriotic about her dumb, unquestioning subservience. Louise was different. She deserved more and better, he was starting to realise, and that was a problem.
    He watched her putting her war paint on. God, he wanted her.
    Being a good liar was what had got him the gig. Once you joined the CIA, the truth was quarantined, a no-go area. What had ever led him to believe he could be different? Lesson One on Day One of training at the Farm: thou shalt have no god but the Agency. Lesson Two: whoever you were no longer exists. Lesson Three: your personal life can go to hell, so stick to one-night stands.
    He’d given Louise quite a detailed sketch of dull State Department work; Commercial Liaison, he’d called it, lots of schmoozing with Chinese businesses and banging the drum for Uncle Sam. Her career, teaching English to men in suits so they could talk to other men in suits – and tell Western hookers what they wanted – was turning out not to be absorbing or unpredictable enough to keep her distracted from wondering why he kept disappearing.
    Before Louise he didn’t have much understanding of women. Mastering Mandarin had been a breeze compared to fathoming female thought processes. You could study for years and just when you thought you’d graduated, they threw you a curve ball and, just like that, you were back in third grade. But she had provided a crash course and brought him up a level. Now he owed her something for her effort.
    She snapped the compact closed and glanced up at his battered face. ‘And you know what else? Even when you do show up, half the time you’re not really here.’
    It was true even now that his head was elsewhere, the cold-blooded execution replaying itself like a nightmare from which he couldn’t fully wake up, the questions stacking up about what just happened and why.
    He looked at her, feeling like a fraud.
    ‘It won’t be like this forever. I’ll change.’
    For different reasons they both knew that wasn’t going to happen. She nodded at the coffee left on the table between them in noman’s-land. He downed it quickly and held the cup out, half hoping she might reach out to take it and he could hold her. The thought of her body temporarily obliterated all other thought. But then she shook her head in disappointment and the cup hung there between them, untaken. The bottom line was that they had both started to care for each other too much. He had naively thought he could keep it on a level, but she was too good for that and he owed her more, far more than