Free Illegal Action by Stella Rimington Page B

routine, and had almost forgotten that he was also being paid to protect his boss. Not peaceful any more, he thought, suddenly alert, recognising that if Brunovsky felt he needed an MP 451, then there must be something to protect him from.

14
    C ouldn’t we just show the photograph to the people at reception?” complained Michael Fane, drawing up a chair next to Peggy Kinsolving in the open-plan office. He held a sheet of paper in his hand, and flapped it irritably. “This is like searching for a needle in a haystack, when we could easily blow all the hay away.
Whoosh!
” He blew air like a mechanical leaf-blower.
    Peggy shook her head. Michael must be my age, she thought, yet sometimes he acted like an undergraduate. He certainly looked like a student, with a boy’s thin build and unruly hair. There was no doubting his cleverness—not with a Double First from Cambridge—but he was also impatient and quick to criticise, even when what he took for stupidity was actually something he didn’t fully understand.
    Peggy said, “Come on, get real. If we start asking around, somebody in the building will talk. We’ve got to try it this way.” She pointed to her laptop, where the most recent Google search showed thirty-seven hits.
    “Safer maybe,” grumbled Michael, “but pretty slow.”
    So far, Peggy had to concede, Michael had a point. She looked at her list of the tenants in the building in Berkeley Square. She’d trawled through the register from Companies House and found three-quarters of the tenants; now she hoped Google would further illuminate the nature of their businesses.
    But how could one tell whether the man A4 had followed had entered the offices of Stringer Fund Management or Piccolo Mundi, importers of fine Italian foodstuffs? Or gone into McBain, Sweeney and White, an up-and-coming ad agency, or Shostas and Newton, lawyers specialising in intellectual property law?
    She looked at the next name on the list and typed “The Cartwright Agency” into the Google query box, then sighed. Doubtless another advertising firm, or a casting agency for films.
    Almost a minute later, Michael Fane finally broke the silence. “What’s the matter, Peggy?” he asked, noticing she was staring at the screen.
    He leant over and read:

    The Cartwright Agency is a new consultancy but with veteran credentials, specialising in providing advice and other forms of assistance on matters of corporate and individual security.

    “Where are you going?” he said, for Peggy was on her feet and already moving fast.
    “I’m going to see Liz,” she called back over her shoulder. “I think we may have found our mystery man.”

    Her appointment was at noon, and when Liz Carlyle emerged from the Underground at Green Park she had half an hour to spare. After a week of steady drizzle, the sky had suddenly brightened and the temperature was in the mid-sixties.
    Mayfair must be one of the nicest places in the world to kill time, she decided as she strolled along New Bond Street looking in the shop windows. It was interesting to have the occasional glimpse into a world of people where money seemed to mean nothing (or was it everything?), but Liz had neither the time nor the inclination to follow fashion or to know who was who among the famous designer names in the shop windows. It was not that she had a puritan’s aversion to a life where what was fashionable mattered; she simply didn’t have the time—or the money.
    Maybe, she thought, this was her chance to find something for a wedding she was going to in May, but a quick foray into Burberry on the corner of Conduit Street unearthed nothing under £500. So she decided she would do as she usually did and look in the little dress shop in Stockbridge, which she passed on her way down to her mother’s Wiltshire house. Cutting down towards Berkeley Square, her thoughts turned to her impending appointment.
    Liz was using her operational cover name of Jane Falconer. She had her hair