Secret Asset by Stella Rimington Read Free Book Online Page B

“Hello, Mr. Maguire. I’m Jane Falconer.”
    The man called Maguire didn’t say hello, only remarking curtly, “I hope you were careful coming here.”
    She had certainly been careful. Liz had flown to Amsterdam rather than direct to Rotterdam’s small airport, then pursued a standard tourist agenda—a taxi straight to the Rijksmuseum, a tour of the Anne Frank house, and lunch outdoors at a canal-side bistro near Dam Square. Then a train to Rotterdam and—Liz had been particularly careful at that point—an unaccompanied walk to the Old Harbour. She sighed inwardly at the time-consuming nature of it all.
    Liz felt at some disadvantage, with her limited experience of the Province. Maguire was used to dealing with old Northern Ireland hands—like Ricky Perrins and Michael Binding. All men and all veterans of the insular yet vastly complicated world of that conflict. Liz couldn’t even pretend to follow all its ins and outs.
    But then I don’t have to, she told herself, deciding she could use her comparative ignorance to advantage. She was not operating in the traditional framework of the place, because all had changed. She was going to have to appeal to Maguire on personal grounds. The question was whether he could respond to that, or whether he would regard his involvement as over, now that peace of a kind held in Northern Ireland.
    â€œI was careful,” she assured him.
    He looked unappeased. “I thought I’d made it clear I told everything I know to your colleague Rob Petch,” he said, using Ricky Perrins’s working alias.
    â€œI’m sure you did,” said Liz, “but Rob’s dead.” You know that, thought Liz. She had told him when she’d rung him, trying to arrange this meeting.
    â€œI’m sure he reported what I’d said,” said Maguire, giving no ground.
    Liz nodded in acknowledgement of this, but then said firmly, “I wanted to hear the story from you direct. Just in case Rob left something out that could help.”
    â€œHelp with what? I told him, Keaney’s secret asset, whoever they were, was never activated. I really don’t see what you want from me.” His voice was starting to rise. Liz looked anxiously around for a waiter, and one came over—a tall, moustachioed man in a white apron.
    â€œ
Kaffe
?” asked Liz, trying to recall her ten words of Dutch.
    The waiter looked down at her with ill-disguised amusement. “White or black, madam?” he said in flawless English. They might have been at the Savoy.
    â€œWhite please,” she said with a smile. She had forgotten the essential bilingualism of the Dutch. They listened to the
Today
programme and watched the ITN news, and read more English-language novels than all the inhabitants of London. One of Liz’s friends from university had lived for six months in Amsterdam and never felt the need to learn a word of Dutch, such was the natives’ aptitude for English.
    Maguire still looked angry. Liz decided to use the waiter’s intervention to change the subject. “Is Rotterdam a favourite place of yours?”
    Maguire shrugged to show his indifference, but then grudgingly started to talk. “It’s where I would have wanted to relocate if I ever got blown. Though Rob always said it would have to be further away. Assuming they didn’t catch me first, of course.” He looked at Liz; they both knew what he meant. In the pre-peace years, without exception every informer the IRA had unearthed and managed to get hold of had been murdered.
    â€œWhy Holland?” asked Liz, keen to keep the man talking.
    â€œI look a bit Dutch, I suppose,” he said. “I feel I blend in here.” Viewing his features—ruddy cheeks, the thinning sandy hair, blue eyes—Liz saw the truth in this. Maguire could pass for a senior lecturer at the local university. All he needed was a pipe.
    â€œIs that why you