Free Haven by Tim Stevens Page A

here in Malta.’
     
    *
     
    Purkiss had arrived in Marsaxlokk on one of the island’s yellow buses, a clattering heat-trap with a dashboard festooned with Catholic iconography, but he rented a car for the return journey to Valletta. The capital was a mere four miles away, the narrow route through the vineyards and the swarming midday traffic making it seem further.
    He’d been in Malta three days, and had so far visited the Ggantija Neolithic temples and explored the architecture of Valletta itself, where his hotel was. The trip had been chosen on a whim, a week before he’d flown out. Malta, where he and Claire had been planning to come on their honeymoon. Malta, whose name was thought by some to derive from the Phoenician for haven .
    Claire, a fellow SIS agent, had been killed in Marseille before Purkiss’s eyes more than five years earlier. He’d left the Service after her killer’s conviction for the murder, and had gone to work for Quentin Vale. Now, his remit was to track down members or former members of the Service who’d gone rogue, and bring them to whatever justice could be achieved with the minimum of public fuss. But things had changed last year, when he’d met the man ultimately responsible for Claire’s death. Purkiss had let the man live, something he’d come to realise was an error.
    He didn’t know quite why he’d decided to come to Malta. To wallow in awareness of what might have been? To find that elusive phenomenon so beloved of modern discourse: closure ? Perhaps it had nothing to do with Claire. Perhaps he wanted to immerse himself in the sights and smells and experience of the place, to find meaning and a new focus for his life in the historic and strangely alien melange of architectural styles and megalithic culture.
    Because Purkiss didn’t know if he could continue with his work any longer.
     
    *
     
    ‘Amanda Cass.’ Her handshake was firm, and dry despite the heat. She was fortyish, short, her fair hair bobbed. Her brown eyes remained levelled on his but Purkiss could feel her appraising his whole person.
    The man introduced himself as Leon Silverman. He was younger than Cass, in his early thirties, fashionably slovenly with his unbuttoned shirt and unshaven chin. His eyes were lazy behind thin glasses; an odd combination, Purkiss thought.
    ‘You said a courtesy call, Mr Purkiss.’
    ‘That’s right.’ The office was behind a nondescript door somewhere at the back of the High Commission building, which was itself on a peninsula facing the walled capital Valletta across the bay. The Service didn’t advertise its presence in the embassies and consulates in which it was based. Cass and Silverman had both met him in the lobby and escorted him in silence to the lift and up. Iced tea was on offer; Purkiss accepted.
    ‘An hour and a half ago I saw Oleksander Motruk in Marsaxlokk.’ Purkiss gave them a concise biography, as well as the name and address of the bed and breakfast he’d seen Motruk enter. Cass listened from across her desk without moving. Over to Purkiss’s left, Silverman sat with a tablet computer in his hand. He too watched Purkiss silently.
    When Purkiss had finished he glanced from one to the other. ‘Any idea why he’s here?’
    ‘Thank you, Mr Purkiss,’ said Cass. ‘We’ll look into it.’
    ‘Fair enough.’ Purkiss stood. ‘You can’t tell me anything. I’m no longer Service.’
    It wasn’t so odd that neither of them had made any notes, Purkiss thought. The room was bugged and they’d have recorded his every word.
     
    *
     
    He’d done his bit as a good former spook citizen. He’d spotted a known enemy, or at least somebody who’d been an enemy less than a decade ago, and he’d passed on the information. What the Service did about it was up to them.
    Purkiss drove the short mile to Valletta itself and strolled the hot early afternoon streets, trying to lose himself in the bustle. He’d parked the rental car near the Museum of Fine Arts