Liz Carlyle - 05 - Present Danger Read Online Free PDF Page B

trousers in a curious shade of faded pinkishred, and brown suede shoes. His hair, previously short and neat, was now curling up off his collar. Liz realised that he had changed from squire to military officer. She sat down and waited to see what the new image portended.
    She knew Binding as a clever but impatient man, whose impatience was at its worst when he had to work with female colleagues. More than impatience, in fact, since he patronised them in a manner so anachronistic and breathtakingly rude that he somehow got away with it. He had become famous for it throughout Thames House and, far from taking offence, most of the women he worked with put up with it and treated it as a joke, swapping stories of occasions when he had called them ‘dear’ or sighed loudly and raised his eyebrows when they disagreed with him. It was a matter of speculation among the women in Thames House what made him do it. Most thought that it was probably because his wife bossed him about at home.
    Liz had never had to work for him before, but a few years previously she had had to interview Binding during an investigation – the same one that had unearthed a mole at a high level of MI5. Binding had been difficult, obstreperous, objecting to her questioning until Liz had warned him that she’d bring in DG if Binding did not cooperate, which reluctantly and sulkily he then had.
    After that, she had kept as far away from him as she could, and when their paths had occasionally crossed he had treated her with cautious resentment. So she watched warily now to see how he would react to her joining his staff.
    ‘I must say,’ he opened, ‘I was hoping to be sent someone with Northern Ireland experience. I understand you have very little.’
    Liz gazed at him levelly while she decided how to respond. ‘Not much,’ she said eventually in a bright, cheerful voice. ‘But as I’m sure you know, I have a lot of agent-running experience and I assume that’s why I was chosen for this particular job.’
    Binding said nothing for a moment. First blood to me, thought Liz to herself. Then, changing tack, he said, ‘It’s busier here than you may think.’ He spoke defensively, as if he sensed scepticism. ‘I know there isn’t much coverage on the mainland of things over here, but the Troubles have far from gone away. Sometimes I think the media doesn’t want to report any problems in the hopes they’ll just disappear.’
    ‘What exactly are the problems?’
    ‘Well, with no Northern Irish background you may find yourself at a disadvantage in understanding the current situation.’
    Liz forced herself not to respond and kept her face expressionless as he went on.
    ‘The usual, just on a much reduced scale. Our estimate is that there are over one hundred paramilitaries still active on the Republican side. They are not particularly well-organised, thank God – they belong to almost as many splinter groups as there are members.’
    ‘Still, a hundred individuals could do a lot of damage,’ said Liz.
    ‘Precisely,’ he said in the pedantic tone Liz remembered, designed to make her feel like a pupil who was being marked on a test. ‘Equally worrying, they can trigger a reaction on the other side. For now, the Loyalist groups have laid down their arms, but a few sectarian murders could change that overnight.’
    ‘Where are these fringe people getting the resources to carry on? Is there still any foreign support?’
    ‘Not that we know of. Al Qaeda aren’t moving in, if that’s what you’re thinking,’ he added with heavy sarcasm,
    ‘I wasn’t, actually,’ said Liz dryly. ‘I was thinking about funding and weaponry – from the States, the Basques, North Africa, South America, wherever.’
    He looked a little surprised that she knew anything about the past sources of IRA arms. ‘Their funding is local now as far as we know. But none of it’s legitimate. Crime of all sorts – drugs, prostitution, robberies. God knows what