Free Once a Spy by Keith Thomson Page A

so you won’t think it’s an idle threat, let’s broach for the first time the topic of what I do for a living. Alice, what do I do for a living?”
    “You hunt for buried pirate treasure.”
    “Sometimes I do, yes. But have you ever thought about buried pirate treasure?”
    “How should I think about it, Nicky?” She was playing along as though he were a seven-year-old.
    He resolved to keep his emotions out of it. “Say you’re a pirate. What sense would it make for you to take your treasure, which likely came at the sacrifice of lives and limbs, and dump it into an unguarded hole in the ground on a remote island you might never be able to find again?”
    “What about the treasure of San Isidro?” she asked. His well-publicized search for the legendary pirate hoard was into a seventh month.
    “Actually, the treasure of San Isidro is the maritime equivalent of an urban legend.”
    “How about your gold escudos, then?” He’d supposedly found the cache after weeks of searching along the Argentine coast. News photographs showed him neck deep in a hole on a beach, holding one of the coins aloft, its gleam matching the one in his eyes. A neophyte collector, Sheikh Abdullah bin Zayed al Saqr, bought the lot for six million dollars.
    “I suspect you already know this, Alice—or whatever your name really is—but in case the brief you were given glossed over it, the truth is that the authenticity of the coins was questionable at best. Al Saqr knew that and didn’t care. Because the coin deal was really a cover for … what, you tell me.”
    She looked away to hide her anguish. “Of course I’ve heard the rumors.”
    He stopped pacing, waited for her to look, then locked eyes with her. “Ever hear the one about Nick Fielding, illegal arms dealer?”
    “Look, if that’s the case—” She was embarking, he suspected, on an explanation of how she’d made her peace with it.
    “It’s the case,” he said. “Moreover, as a dealer in illegal arms, one has to be ruthless, probably to a psychotic extent, though I’m probably an exception—then again, what psychopath thinks he’s a psychopath? In any event, I had a man keelhauled recently. Know what that is?”
    “I don’t think I want to.” Her eyes pooled with tears.
    “Sorry, you’ve got to. ‘Keelhauled’ means dragged under a ship’s hull so you drown, if you’re lucky. Otherwise you’re shredded by barnaclesand whatnot. It would’ve been easier for me to put a bullet through the guy’s head, of course; the keelhauling was something of a public relations move.”
    Weakly, she asked, “Are you going to keelhaul me?”
    “Are you going to tell me who sent you?”
    “Nicky, please, I—” Her voice broke into a sob.
    “Then what good would keelhauling you do? You wouldn’t be able to tell me who sent you.”
    “I wouldn’t be able to tell you regardless. I haven’t the first clue even why you think someone sent me.”
    “How about the night on the Malecón, when the Blackbeard look-alike said, ‘What’s a matter, puta , you too good for us?’ First, the script was laughable. And how about the way he delivered the line a second time, just in case I missed it the first time because of the loud waves? Also, my dear honey trap, your hair was, and remains, red—my weakness for which is widely known. Now, before you accuse me of being vain, know I’ve done some homework. You claimed to be the only child of parents now deceased. You said you had an idyllic upbringing in Chiswick in West London, and you fled a tedious assistant solicitor’s life in Bristol to study marine biology in the Bahamas. And your story held water, as it were. Whoever sent you did a bang-up job on your legend, if that’s the right term. Probably you’re one of those spooks with the single-mindedness of a mountaintop monk; you can set your real life aside for months at a time. Still, you’re human, which means you can’t entirely extinguish your feelings for your