Liz Carlyle - 06 - Rip Tide by Stella Rimington Page A

expensive. He still did occasional auditing when one of the big firms needed reinforcement; he found the money useful. Arthur had always found him very reliable.
    Then there was Pappas. A Greek native but bilingual, or actually trilingual since his Arabic too was fluent after a decade spent in the Gulf working for a sheikh in the Emirates. It was there he had first come under MI6’s wing, passed on by the CIA during a time of co-operative swaps; he’d been recruited by Langley easily enough, since he loathed the corruption in the regime he worked for. Back in Greece, he’d set up his own accountancy firm, hiring and firing staff as the economy waxed and waned.
    But there was a small problem with the Greek. He drank. Arthur remembered a catastrophic dinner he’d had with Pappas and Danny Molyneux; by the time the dessert had arrived, Pappas was stupefied with ouzo . They’d had difficulty persuading a taxi driver to take him home.
    The third candidate was new to Goldsmith. Maria Galanos had been passed on from Head Office and signed up by one of the more junior members of the station. Greek father, English mother. Educated at a girls’ boarding school in England; economics degree from Manchester, followed by an MBA at INSEAD. A job with Price Waterhouse in London, where she was first contacted by MI6, was followed by a post in a Saudi bank in Frankfurt; the file didn’t make clear if that was at the Service’s instigation. But whether it was or not, she’d helped the Service and their German counterparts expose an Al Qaeda money-laundering scheme. She’d come to live in Athens six months earlier, for ‘personal reasons’ the file said, and was not currently working. The photograph in the file showed a dark, attractive young woman with a pleasant smile.
    Mackay read the summaries that Arthur had prepared and flicked through the files. ‘So tell me your thoughts, Arthur. Who’s it going to be?’
    Goldsmith made a show of thinking about it; there was no point in offering an immediate opinion – he’d already formed the view that Mackay was the sort who would always plump for the opposite.
    Mackay said, ‘What do you think of Pappas?’
    Goldsmith made a drinking motion.
    ‘I see. Well, we all have our failings, but I don’t think we can live with that one in this instance. What about young Maria then?’ He glanced down at her photograph. ‘Pretty girl, don’t you think?’ When Goldsmith said nothing, Mackay shrugged. ‘Perhaps not. But what’s your view?’
    ‘Excellent credentials.’ Best to begin with the positive, then move in for the kill. ‘But awfully young. If you think about it, she’s only really had the one mission in Frankfurt.’
    Mackay nodded. ‘So you think Arbuthnot’s our man for the job?’
    ‘I think so. Sound pair of hands.’
    Mackay nodded. Arthur was surprised. Perhaps this was going to be easier than he’d expected.
    Mackay went on nodding in an absent-minded sort of way. But then he said firmly, ‘Can’t see Arbuthnot myself. Too conventional in my view, and he’s just not going to have the radar for office gossip that we need. My vote’s for Maria – her credentials are just as good, and she’s shown initiative in the past. Yes. I think Maria’s the one for this job.’

Chapter 16
    The old Sikh had driven Liz all the way to Birmingham International Station, though he obviously suspected she was a hysterical woman who had overreacted to some harmless game played by a pair of boys. She had decided not to call the police, as her attackers were long gone into the maze of streets around the Khans’ house and she did not want to draw the attention of the local constabulary to her interest in the family. She would tell Fontana about it in the morning. He might know the boys – they obviously knew him – and be able to find out what their connection was with Amir Khan, and why they had attacked her.
    The train from Birmingham to King’s Cross had been packed and with