Page 129 of Fire Must Burn

‘Damn,’ he said.

‘Still want me to shoot her?’ asked Carruthers.

‘No,’ said the Brigadier. ‘Besides, she has Bainbridge with her.’

The two women were standing in front of the gate, their arms folded. Carruthers killed the engine, then got out.

‘How is it going to be, Sparks?’ he said.

‘We’ve come to negotiate, so we’ll behave,’ said Sparks.

‘There is nothing to negotiate, Sparks,’ said the Brigadier as he got out. ‘It’s done. Go home.’

‘Parham needs to know more to charge her,’ said Sparks.

‘She’s going to be released tonight,’ said the Brigadier. ‘The orders have already gone through. She’s too valuable an asset to waste.’

‘After what she did? You really want a psychopath like her working for you?’

‘She’s perfect, Sparks,’ said the Brigadier. ‘In the span of a few short days she improvised a plan to seduce a man she’d just met into committing a murder for her, and there is nothing about it that can be traced back to my department.’

‘You said you weren’t trying to kill Danforth,’ said Sparks.

‘We weren’t,’ said the Brigadier. ‘But we were not unhappy with the result. Danforth in the Foreign Office poses a genuine and immediate threat to our operations. Now at the very least he’ll be out of commission for some time. If he’s still keen on continuing his career, we’ll be watching him even more closely.’

‘You weren’t trying to kill him,’ said Mrs Bainbridge. ‘But you knew she was Bruce Cater’s younger sister, didn’t you? You knew about the connection between Cater and Danforth.’

‘I did,’ said the Brigadier.

‘So you recruited her specifically to put her in a position where she could exact vengeance upon him,’ said Mrs Bainbridge. ‘And then waited to see what would happen. Like a stupid little boy playing with a chemistry set seeing if he might set off an explosion.’

‘What are you going to do with her now?’ asked Sparks.

‘Train her further, find another mission for her particular set of talents,’ said the Brigadier. ‘She’s going to be the operative you never could have been, Sparks. Do you know why?’

‘Tell me,’ she said.

‘Because she lacks the flaws that held you back,’ he said. ‘You had a conscience and a sense of remorse. She doesn’t.’

‘She’s still young,’ said Sparks. ‘She may still develop them. If she does, they will break her. They broke me.’

‘I know, Sparks,’ he said. ‘Otherwise I would have made more of an effort to keep you. Go home. Parham has a criminal to charge, Lowle vanishes into a new identity, everybody gets what they need.’

‘Not everybody,’ she said.

‘Everybody who matters,’ he replied.

‘We won’t be doing you any more favours,’ she said. ‘Be clear about that.’

‘And if you attempt to punish us for that, we have left letters detailing this shambles of an operation with someone we trust,’ added Mrs Bainbridge. ‘Not Mr Danielli.’

‘No, he would be too obvious a choice,’ said the Brigadier. ‘I’ll be sending a man to collect Lowle’s records from The Right Sort tomorrow. We’re through, ladies. Goodnight.’

He stepped between them, opened his gate, then went inside.

‘I could give you a lift home,’ offered Carruthers.

‘We already beat up two of your colleagues today,’ said Sparks. ‘Would you like to be the third?’