The Secret Meaning of Blossom: a fast-moving spy thriller set in Japan Read online

  Fairchild, always Fairchild. Walter was obsessed with John Fairchild. That was what guilt did to you. “You put me in a situation where I had to work with him despite my reservations, or walk away entirely. Sure, at times it worked well but he kept things from me, too, Walter. Including the fact that he’d had contact with one of my informants who then got herself into a lot of trouble. We have different views about the man, but I think it’s a bit unfair if you’re using that to form some theory about my personality defects.”

  She stabbed the fish and cracked its spine. “The op was a success. Despite Fairchild’s absence for part of it.”

  Walter looked philosophically at the tablecloth and returned to his lamb. A long silence followed. Rose dissected the fish, and Walter’s comments. No point in saying what she really thought: you wouldn’t be saying all that about a man. But it was true. Hardball males were gutsy. Hardball females were damaged. Walter was always trying to talk up John Fairchild, making up for supposedly letting him down in the past. The truth was, regardless of what happened in the man’s childhood, Fairchild had grown up to be a cynical, untrusting, self-serving operator with no loyalty to anyone and a serious grudge against the British intelligence service. It also had to be said that his cynicism made him very useful to Rose. After the Monaco operation, she and Fairchild had a conversation that changed everything, and it was one that Walter was never going to know about.

  “So what are you saying, Walter?” she asked. “What does this mean for me? Paris was only going to be temporary. What next?”

  Walter laid down his cutlery. “You need a break from operations, Rose. I’m assigning you to an analysis team back in London.”

  “London? I don’t want London. Give those posts to people who want to settle down and send their kids to nice schools. I want a posting. One that lasts more than a few months. That’s what I’m good at, Walter. I got you Grom, didn’t I? We went after his money and we found it.”

  “Yes, indeed, Rose. There’s been no sign of the man since Monaco. Hopefully he’s too advanced in years now to make another comeback.” Grom was the gritty street name for former MI6 double agent Gregory Sutherland, a man with a history of grudges against his former employer which resulted in many lives lost, including, a long time ago, Fairchild’s parents.

  “Then let me do more of that. I’m good, Walter. There are plenty of other dangerous people out there.”

  “In time, of course. But for now, you’re out of the field. Go home. Take a break.”

  “I don’t need a break. I need to get back to what I’m good at. What’s this really about?”

  Walter blinked. He rarely showed any signs of impatience, but she was sailing close to the wind now. “I’ve told you what it’s really about. London is the only offer for now. We have analyst vacancies and you can be useful there. It’s not forever.”

  “How long is it for, then?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “So what do I need to do?”

  He sighed again. “Think about what I’ve said. Think about what’s important.”

  Rose gave him a blank stare. “That’s it? Come on, Walter. There must be more. You want me to do some training? More counselling? Whatever. I’ll do it.”

  She could hear herself now, over-eager like a new recruit. Truth was, she couldn’t see anything beyond this job. It was her life. Walter confining her to an analyst’s desk in London was a kind of slow strangulation.

  “We’ll catch up over there in a couple of weeks,” he said. “I’m sure you’ll like it more than you think.”

  “I’m sure I won’t.”

  Walter ignored her petulance. “Oh, I almost forgot! The internal mail arrived as I was walking out of the door. Something for you. Via the Foreign Office.”

  He handed her a brown envelope. Like many others at MI6, Rose worked under diplomatic cover, so getting mail that route made sense. But snail mail of any kind was pretty unusual these days. She opened it. Inside was a postcard, sent from Japan several days ago. She recognised her brother’s handwriting straight away.

  Dear Rose. I am in Tokyo, enjoying a few extra days after attending a conference. As you can see, the cherry blossom is lovely at this time of year.

  She flipped the card over. On the front was a picture of a temple, formal Japanese gardens and a few boughs laden with blossom. The message concluded: I hope things are going well for you in the diplomatic arena. Thinking of you, James.

  Rose put the card down and stared at it.

  “Something troubling?” asked Walter.

  “It’s a postcard from my brother. He’s in Japan.”

  “Ah! That’s nice. Not many people bother with postcards these days.”

  That was exactly what Rose was thinking.

  “You’ve never mentioned your brother, to my recollection,” said Walter.

  “Why should I? Lives in Surrey. Works in IT. Married. Kids. What’s there to say?” Rose stared at the postcard.

  Strange. Very strange.

  Chapter 3

  John Fairchild climbed from the old town square up streets so steep the pavements were steps. Mountains rose up, the dramatic backdrop to Riva del Garda, a town slotted into the narrow top end of Italy’s Lake Garda, itself a water-filled gash amongst the vast peaks.

  The house wasn’t easy to find. Not obvious. That was probably deliberate. Old spies fell into habits they’d never break, always watching, always looking over their shoulder. By counting he knew he had the right door, but it had no number, name or bell. By the side of the row of narrow cottages lay yet more steps, rising up and round at the back. Fairchild took these and found himself on a level with roof terraces lined with geraniums. A woman with white hair was working with a trowel and some window boxes, absorbed. It wasn’t her face that was familiar; it was something about her movements, the way she held herself. There were times when he thought he’d never find the woman. And now he had, just when he needed this the most.

  “Penny?” He spoke softly. They weren’t far from each other but there was a gap between him and the terraces. He didn’t want to startle her, but she looked up sharply, suddenly alert. It was to be expected, he supposed. She stared, then took several steps towards him.

  “Do I know you? I think maybe I do. I’m sorry, I don’t remember so well these days.”

  “I’m John Fairchild.”

  She had spoken Italian, with no trace of accent. He spoke in English. She peered at him with blue eyes, her skin tanned and rosy. An old woman now, but there was recognition in her face.

  “John Fairchild! How extraordinary. John Fairchild! That’s a name I haven’t heard in a long time. Come round, come round!”

  She hurried down to let him in, smiling, playing the nice old lady: what a delightful surprise! But her smile held a shadow as well. She directed him back out onto the terrace and brought fruit squash for them both: “I can’t get used to the tea here, it’s not the same.” They sat at a table.

  “Was it Walter who sent you?” she asked.

  “Walter doesn’t know I’m here. I found you myself. I have a few contacts.”

  “So I’ve heard, so I’ve heard.”

  She kept her ear to the ground, then, even in retirement. Fairchild knew his reputation was mixed. Some in the clandestine world valued his information-gathering services, available to almost anyone at a price. Others were less keen, but he was fine with that. For decades he had been trying to trace names from the past using his global network and endless favour-trading. Penny Galloway had proved the most elusive of them all. But here she was, and her name had popped right after the conversation with Rose which made this so much more important. He’d come straight here from Marseille.

  “When did we see each other last?” said Penny.

  “I think I was about eight or nine,” said Fairchild. “You sat in the kitchen with my mother. I remember you laughing.”

  She blinked a little. “Yes, I remember. That was only a year or two before —”
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  “Before they were killed.”

  Her face stilled. “You know that for sure now?”

  “Yes. I know that for sure.”

  “Well, I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry that it happened? Or sorry that I found out?”

  Her jaw tightened. He regretted it instantly. This wasn’t Walter he was talking to. “I’m sorry. I didn’t come here to pick a fight.”

  “But you’re angry. You feel we held out on you. Well, I can understand that.” The tension was still there but she was moving things on. “Walter had good reason to keep things from you. Certainly to start with. You were a child. Later on, well…but it was his call, ultimately. He was the one who was close to it all. He was right there, in Vienna. And Walter didn’t know who was behind it. He only suspected.”

  “Really?”

  The stillness remained. The blue of her eyes seemed darker. She would know that he’d come here for a reason, because he’d discovered something or wanted to know more.

  “This idea,” she said, “that Gregory Sutherland went over to the USSR. They were convinced of it, your mum and dad. People thought they were obsessed. I wanted to believe he was dead. But when your parents disappeared…”

  “I met him, Penny.”

  “He’s still alive, then?” She didn’t seem too surprised.

  “Still alive and still operating. Until a few months ago he worked for the FSB just as he was with the KGB in the Soviet days, with a false Russian ID. But the Kremlin was tipped off about who he really was and he went on the run. The Russians have been going after all his foreign assets. This came to a head recently in Monaco and thereabouts.”

  “That fracas on the French Riviera? Some gang fight in a villa, I read. Something about a painting. Well, well. Gregory Sutherland.” She said his name almost dreamily. “You’ve met him, you say?” There was brightness in her eyes, but she was guarded. A dangerous topic but a compelling one all the same.

  “In Russia. I was going to kill him. But…”

  “But you didn’t. He was always good at talking himself out of a hole. You had reason enough. Either you would try and kill him or he would do it to you.”

  “He tried it a number of times. He killed others to get to me.”

  “You see, this is what Walter was afraid of,” said Penny. “That if Sutherland found out about you, he’d go after you as well. Not that you had anything to do with your parents exposing him as a double agent. You weren’t even alive back then. But he was a vindictive character. And then there was the prospect that you’d go after him.”

  “Walter should have told me. He should have told me everything.” Fairchild could hear the child in his voice. Walter did that to him.

  “You were ten years old. The instinct is to protect. That’s what he was trying to do. Still is, I’m sure.”

  “Every time I make some discovery about what happened, I find out he already knew.”

  She wasn’t going to persuade him. She took a sip of squash and moved things on. “So where is Sutherland now?”

  “He’s in hiding. He lost all his assets. He’s gone underground.”

  “I see. Then why are you here?”

  She wasn’t afraid of a direct question. And he wasn’t here just to reminisce. What sent him was current and mattered now, even if the answers were in the past. “You knew Sutherland. You worked together. You knew my parents, and Walter. What else is there, Penny? What else happened between you all that people aren’t telling me?”

  There was something more specific, but he’d come on to that later. He’d start with an open question and see where that led. Penny paused, uncertain maybe, then settled back in her chair.

  “I’ll tell you what matters. There was always something off about Gregory Sutherland. A hardness to him. A lack of empathy, they’d say these days. They do tests, now. Weed out the troublesome personalities. Back then, a lot rode on gut feel. You could talk yourself in, with the right kind of background. If you were a decent sort of chap. And they were almost all chaps back then. He’d been there three or four years by the time I joined. Very strong with cyphers, cracking codes. He should have been in GCHQ really, but that wasn’t what interested him. He liked people. Or rather, he liked what he could do with people. Control them, manipulate them. Play them, without them even realising. I know we all do some of that in this business, but he took such pleasure in it. It really was a game to him.”

  A game, cyphers and codes: it all fitted. What was he trying to remember? An Aztec religious ritual. What was the rest of it?

  Penny was back in the sixties, trawling through it all. “There was pushback on our operations, information getting out. The Fairchilds were brought in to investigate. I didn’t know about it, of course, it was all kept hush-hush. Then Sutherland died. Well, supposedly. A car crash up in Scotland, near the family home. The investigation ended. They could discuss it after that. It didn’t surprise me they suspected him. He was given a lot of trust very early. As I said, you could talk yourself in, back then. He had a run of bad luck, let’s say. A number of his agents ended up getting killed. I think some people put it down to him not caring enough whether they lived or died. He always had a full explanation, but still. Not a big step to suspecting there was something more organised about it. He must have got wind of it, and disappeared. That should have been the end of it. But they couldn’t leave it alone.”

  “My parents?”

  She nodded. “They became very cautious, convinced he was after them. Used to see patterns in things, signals. I didn’t think it was real, I have to say. I thought it was their way of caring about you. That was a large part of it. You were born after he left, you see. So he wouldn’t have known about you. They worried about that. Sent you away to boarding school as soon as they could. They were always looking over their shoulders. I suppose at times they might have been a little distant. I never thought about it from your point of view.”

  Fairchild saw a hundred things from back then, scrolling through his mind. Objects and words flooded in. “They took me to the British Museum one time. They set me a test. An Aztec religious ritual. Incense-burning in Yemen.” It was coming back word for word. “The birth of ethnography. A stone as precious as gold. What connects them all? My father said that to me. Then they both walked off and left me in the atrium. I had to solve the puzzle to find them again. It took me four hours. I was nine. For a long time, I thought that was normal parenting.”

  Penny looked pained. “That was your dad. He believed in pure knowledge, the key to understanding everything. He absorbed it all and had this incredible way of drawing on it. He saw connections between things, thought cryptically. It helped them with Sutherland who was very highly educated too. Looked down on anyone who wasn’t. Edward was just as erudite but without the snobbery. It must have seemed harsh. They were trying to prepare you, I think.”

  “I’m not sure how successful they were.”

  “You survived Sutherland, didn’t you? You’re not your father but you’ve taken a different route. More direct, less cerebral, maybe. That’s not necessarily a bad thing.”

  She was perceptive, or she knew more about him than she was letting on. This was getting to him more than he thought it would. He needed more squash. She poured it for him. He drank and carried on.

  “When my mother wrote to me in boarding school, it was never in English. French, Russian, Arabic, even in code. If I wanted to know what they were saying to me, I had to figure it out the best I could.” He was talking too much but it wanted to come out. There weren’t many left who remembered them.

  Penny gave a half-smile this time. “She was a natural linguist. I bet you are, too. It’s helped you, I’m sure.”

  She still didn’t understand. He had to make her understand. “The night they disappeared, I didn’t know what to do. When I came back to the flat and they’d gone, I thought it was another game. A puzzle I had to solve. All those years I was trying to find an answer. But they were already d
ead. He killed them almost straight away. Took them to some interrogation centre near Moscow. They never came out.”

  “Oh, you poor thing,” said Penny. “What a cruel, cruel thing.”

  He saw comprehension in her eyes now. He couldn’t speak. The wind rustled the geraniums in their pots.

  “That’s the Ora coming in,” said Penny. “The wind is very predictable here. It’s to do with the thermals, air temperature over the mountains and the lake. The air over the water heats up quicker than the air over the land. Or is it the other way round? I never remember.”

  She was chatting to fill a gap, give him time to recover. He stared at the geraniums and listened.

  “In the morning it’s a northerly. That’s called the Pelèr. That dies down, then comes the Ora, the southerly. Every day, like clockwork. Except when a storm is coming. Grom is Russian for thunder, isn’t it?”

  “He won’t come here,” said Fairchild, finding his voice again. “Even if he were watching somehow, no one could have tracked me here.”

  “Oh, that’s not what I meant. Don’t worry about me. Habits of a lifetime. Nobody creeps up on me.”

  “I got the impression I startled you earlier.”

  “Did you?” She smiled. “Did you hear the dog barking when you passed in front of the church? I knew someone was coming, someone new. There are people I can call on.”

  “MI6 people? Marcus Salisbury looks after old spies, does he?”

  She snorted. “Why would Marcus Salisbury care about a faded old flower like me? The Service looks after its own despite people like Salisbury. We don’t all end up dead or mad. I lead a regular life here. I get bread and food every morning in the town. I join the Passegiatta in the evening. If I don’t show up, people will know what to do. What do you think of the geraniums? I suppose they’re a bit of a cliché.”

  He was floored by her question. But she didn’t really need an answer. “Truth is, they’re hardy. They can take these winds and they don’t need much looking after. That’s why everyone has them. And what’s wrong with that? It’s no bad thing to fit in, become a part of a place, part of its routine.”