Fifty minutes later, as he circled around his destination, he was confident he wasn’t being followed. He was heading for the Venus de Milo, a luxury hotel situated only a few hundred yards from the Parthenon. He’d checked the pavements behind him carefully as he’d walked, and been alert for a front tail as well; he’d detoured through a large department store that stayed open late, taking the lift up and the stairs down, then had a quick espresso in a coffee bar with a good vantage point towards the street. He’d even searched himself, against the remote possibility that a tracking device had been planted on his clothes. Nothing, and no one.
The bar in the Venus de Milo was humming, full of tourists staying at the hotel and locals from the offices nearby, willing to pay over the odds for a cocktail in order to enjoy the air-conditioning. A long mahogany bar hugged one side of the low room on the hotel’s ground floor. Berger spotted a tall frosted glass of beer sitting on the bar top in front of two empty stools. He sat down on one of them, and as the barman approached pointed to the full glass. The barman drew another beer from the tap and, as he put it down in front of Berger, a tall, heavy-set man sat down next to him.
‘I’m Stimkin,’ the big man said, taking a long pull from his waiting glass of beer. He didn’t shake hands. ‘You checked out fine, Mitch, but this is your first contact in five years. So what’s the big emergency?’
Inwardly Berger sighed. He’d seen enough of the world not to stereotype people, but he’d seen an awful lot of versions of Hal Stimkin before, especially in the Agency. He would be a former jock, probably a former football player, possibly ex-military; he’d have joined the Agency on the heavy rather than the cerebral side, but shown enough polish to rise in the ranks and become a Head of Station. He’d be a self-proclaimed ‘straight shooter’, which really just meant he not only lacked sophistication but was proud of the deficit. All in all he was about as far as you could get from the Ivy League WASP who, both in the old days and in the popular imagination, staffed the higher ranks of the CIA.
Berger gave a terse account of recent events to Stimkin, ending in the death of the planted MI6 agent.
‘Why didn’t you flag Six’s involvement to us?’
Berger shrugged. ‘To be honest, it didn’t seem relevant. They were just helping sort out a criminal situation. Nothing of interest to Langley.’
‘Let Langley be the judge of that, pal. Six must have thought it was more than that or they wouldn’t have bothered.’
‘My boss is ex-Six. They were doing him a favour.’
‘Oh, really?’ asked Stimkin, gesturing to the barman for two more beers. ‘That would imply they’re a lot nicer than we are. And they’re not.’ The second implication was clear: Stimkin thought there was more to this than met the eye. Perhaps he wasn’t so stupid after all.
Their beers came and they waited for the barman to move away. Stimkin said, ‘So, what do you want from us?’
‘Help,’ said Berger bluntly. ‘I need my back watched.’
‘And in return?’
‘You know everything that happens.’
Stimkin grimaced. ‘A bunch of hoods are ripping off your ships. Do we care who they are?’
‘Not if it’s that simple. I’m not sure it is.’
Stimkin nodded. ‘You could be right, bud.’ The big man would have seen Berger’s Agency CV, or at least a précis of it. He’d know Berger wouldn’t have spent twenty years doing the things he had done for the Agency if he were some sort of crank. ‘OK, so let’s keep in touch. I’ll brief Langley.’
‘And I get back-up?’
‘Let’s see. For now, sit tight.’
Stimkin looked at the bill the barman had placed next to their beers. ‘I don’t believe the Brits are just going to give up because one of their people got iced. They’ll be back as soon as the Greek cops get out of the way. I want to know when they are, understood?’
Berger had had enough. He’d left the Agency after all, he hadn’t been pushed out. And now Stimkin was acting as if he were some sort of underling or, even worse, a dubious source. He decided to beat Stimkin to the punch, and got down off his stool before the big man did. He said, ‘Don’t worry, I’ve got it, Hal.’ And he didn’t mean the bill; he figured Langley owed him that at least.
This was weird. Peggy sighed and looked again at the CV in front of her. It was the third day she’d spent checking the credentials of the UCSO staff in London and Athens. She wasn’t entirely sure what she was looking for – just anything that might mean someone was not who they appeared to be, and had joined the charity with an ulterior motive. It was as vague as that, but she hoped she’d recognise it when she saw it. So far all she had found were the sort of discrepancies that you might find in any organisation of fifty-five employees that wasn’t too careful about its recruitment processes.
