Liz Carlyle - 06 - Rip Tide by Stella Rimington

the sleeves rolled up to his elbows revealing tanned arms downed with fine blond hair and a heavy, expensive-looking watch. It wouldn’t have been so annoying, Arthur thought, if Mackay hadn’t also been very clever.
    ‘There’s a job come in for us from Head Office. They’ve got a bit of a situation. The French have managed to catch some pirates trying to board a cargo ship in the Indian Ocean, off Somalia. It turns out the ship sailed from here; it was leased by a London-based charity with an office in Athens.’
    ‘UCSO,’ Goldsmith murmured.
    ‘That’s right,’ said Mackay, looking up in surprise. ‘How’d you know that?’
    ‘It’s the only major international charity with a base in Greece.’
    ‘Do we have a contact in their office?’
    ‘Danny knew the boss, an American called Berger, but I’ve never met him. Danny didn’t hand him on when he left; I think he was more of a friend than an official station contact. You know the rules about not getting too close to charities.’
    ‘Yes. Well, Geoffrey Fane’s in touch with their boss in London and it seems they’ve been having a bit of a hijacking problem for some time. Not alone in that, of course, but this time the French Navy nabbed the pirates and one of them turns out to be a British citizen. Hails from Birmingham, would you believe?’ Mackay leaned back in his chair, stretched out his long legs and laughed.
    ‘Anyway, that’s one aspect. The other is that the UCSO people are worried that someone’s been leaking information about their shipments. The only ships hijacked have had especially valuable cargo – cash in particular. Those with just the routine stuff have been left alone.’
    Arthur Goldsmith pondered this for a moment. ‘Don’t tell me Head Office believes that Somalian pirates have a source inside UCSO?’
    Mackay grinned. ‘Who knows what Geoffrey believes or what he’s really up to? He plays his cards close to his chest. But he’s agreed with the London UCSO boss that we’ll put someone in at the Athens end to try and find out what’s going on. Berger’s in on it and we’re going to do it straight away.
    ‘Apparently there’s a vacancy for an assistant accountant at the moment, and Geoffrey wants us to find someone with the right credentials to apply. Then Berger will fix it for them to get the job and we’ll run them from here.
    ‘So what I’d like you to do, Arthur,’ said Mackay, standing up, ‘is to look through the station assets and see if we’ve got anyone on the books who fits the bill. It’ll be so much quicker if someone’s already recruited than starting from scratch. I gather there’s some urgency about this.’
    Bloody Fane, thought Arthur to himself, as he walked back down the corridor, he must be short of things to do. Back in his office, he took out a dozen files from a combination-locked filing cabinet. After about half an hour he picked up three of them and walked back to Bruno’s room.
    The door was open and Bruno, feet propped up on the desk and hands locked together behind his head, was listening to the radio. ‘Just polishing up my Greek,’ he said as Arthur walked in. ‘What have you dredged up?’
    There were three candidates who had the necessary credentials.
    George Arbuthnot had been on the books for ten years. His track record was sound if not inspiring; he was a chartered accountant who had retired to the island of Naxos. He’d worked as a civilian employee for the British Military delegation in Berlin during the Cold War, had married a German and stayed on after the Wall came down. He had been an occasional but useful source of information since then, as his auditing responsibilities had included some of the businesses set up in the former East Berlin by retired officers of the KGB and the Stasi. Then he’d retired, but after three months of Naxos narcolepsy, as he was fond of calling it, he’d moved to Athens, where he and his German wife found life more lively if more