Murder By Umbrella: (Passion) (The Nikki Sinclair Quartet Book 1) Read online

  Other Books by Jaye Rothman

  The Hell Of Osirak

  (Betrayal)

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  A Perfect Interlude

  (A short story that follows on after The Hell Of Osirak)

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  Here’s the link to my Amazon author page

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  And the link to my blog – Spiesliesandlesbians

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  MURDER BY UMBRELLA

  (Passion)

  by

  Jaye Rothman

  MURDER BY UMBRELLA

  By

  JAYE ROTHMAN

  Copywrite © Jaye Rothman 2015

  All Rights Reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  MURDER BY UMBRELLA is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events and actual persons are used fictitiously, and are products of the author’s imagination.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER 1: EGYPT

  CHAPTER 2: THE DIRECTOR GENERAL’S BRIEFING

  CHAPTER 3: DAY ONE

  CHAPTER 4: DAY TWO

  CHAPTER 5: DAY THREE

  CHAPTER 6: DAY FOUR

  CHAPTER 7: DAY FIVE

  CHAPTER 8: EPILOGUE

  CHAPTER 9: CONCLUSIONS

  THE DISHONOURABLE SPY

  CHAPTER 1: ROME, ITALY

  CHAPTER 1

  EGYPT

  MARCH 1978

  Five days ago I killed a woman.

  I wasn’t a member of any religious faith, but I did believe in good and evil. A Catholic would have accused me of committing a mortal sin, and I supposed that I had. I had violated my own moral code, crossing a line that I swore I would never cross. Why had I committed such a heinous act against my own sex? Was it just because I had been ordered to? What kind of an excuse was that for murder?

  How was I going to live with myself? That I didn’t know. Would I ever be able to forgive myself? That was unlikely. I felt I had defiled something deep within me and there would be no escape into the light for me this time.

  I will never forget the look of betrayal in her eyes when she realised her life would be cut short, snuffed out. She was beautiful, elegant and amusing and there had been a vulnerability in her that had drawn me as a flame draws a moth. Inevitably I’d wanted more of her. I had been her friend and her confidante for too brief a time, and would willingly have been her lover, if she had desired me in that way. But she hadn’t. Had I been in love with her? Yes, I think I had, a little.

  Hammamet is a resort on the coast of Tunisia, and only 150 kilometres from Sicily. The main attraction is the beach, which is long and sandy and curves gently down to the Mediterranean Sea. Most of the time, it looks blue and inviting. It had been discovered in the 1920s by the European fast set, mostly artists and writers. The notorious Wallis Simpson, King Edward VIII’s mistress, and then his wife, had been a visitor.

  Now it was relegated to a popular package holiday destination for British tourists, featuring hotel bars selling cheap alcohol and a plethora of sun loungers by swimming pools, guaranteed to make a two-week getaway go with a swing.

  It hadn’t been my choice to vacation here. I never holiday in the countries I work in – too risky, dangerous and unpredictable. You never know who you’ll run into.

  I nodded at the man who was tending the bar. He knew me as Jo Davies, who was the current occupant of room 41. This was not, of course, my given name, just another in the long list of identities I’ve used over the years. He slowly picked up the bottle of Johnnie Walker – not my usual Red Label, but Black for special occasions and holidays – and poured me another double measure. He avoided all eye contact with me; he probably disapproved of a woman drinking alone at a bar. How long had I been sitting here?

  I drained the last of my Johnnie Walker and stubbed out my Rothmans. I was back to smoking them again. In Cairo I had smoked Shepheards, but they were far too distinctive, so I could never smoke them again.

  I wanted another drink, as this was the only remedy I knew that would give me some much-needed sleep. Sleep – it was just a five-letter word that so many people took for granted every night, that rejuvenated the body and calmed the mind. It wasn’t surprising that Morpheus, the ancient god of dreams, had been venerated by the Greeks and Romans. How I longed to be able to put my head on the pillow and fall into a dreamless sleep, a sleep that didn’t involve nightmares of violent death. A sleep from which I didn’t waken covered in sweat, shaking and longing to see the dawn breaking, longing to be anywhere else but here drinking myself into oblivion.

  Then I glanced up and saw her in the reflection of the optics. Yesterday when I had been visiting the local medina, in an attempt to distract myself from my guilt and remorse, I had observed her watching me. She was casual, but clearly watching. The medina wasn’t large compared to the enormous Khan el-Khalili bazaar in Cairo. Tourists were busy taking photos of the picturesque alleyways, which were bordered with dazzling whitewashed walls inset with blue painted doors and windows. The ever-present, flaming red bougainvilleas ran riot over arches. It was an attractive setting and, for tourists who had been warned of pickpockets and other dangers, it was a safe enough place to be.

  I had veered off the usual tourist path and had ventured further into the medina. She stayed ten yards from me, browsing through the vast array of spices for sale. Had she been watching me since my arrival in Tunisia? I wasn’t completely sure as I had spent most of the last two days, somewhat unwisely, under the influence of alcohol. I hadn’t been at my highest level of alert. Yes, I had taken basic precautions but, clearly, these hadn’t been sufficient.

  Who was she? She wasn’t my type – not that I had a type these days. How long had it been since I had slept with a woman? Six months and counting, I thought. Too long, anyway. She was auburn haired, a colour similar to Susan Sarandon’s in The Rocky Horror Picture Show. This Susan, however, was slim but not thin, and perhaps a little shorter than my 5’7”. She wore a large straw-brimmed hat to protect her pale skin from the ravages of the sun.

  Whoever she was working for had made an error, or they had wanted me to spot her. In counter-intelligence work, blending in is a necessity. If you can’t, you’re made and quite possibly dead by the end of the day. Why hadn’t she dyed her hair or worn a wig? Did she want me to notice her?

  I continued to watch her in the mirror, while she sat on a beige sofa watching me watching her at the beige bar, taking her time to light another Benson and Hedges. She exhaled through her nostrils. So she was a smoker. That wasn’t part of her cover. She crossed her legs, showing me a large expanse of her thigh in the process, and took another sip of her whisky.

  Who was she? Was she working for the Egyptians, the Tunisians or the KGB?

  Then she smiled at me, and her gaze lingered on my lips. We didn’t break eye contact; I had found someone like me, in a bar in Hammamet. What were the chances of that happening? Suddenly my life didn’t feel quite so bleak.

  Fourteen weeks ago I had been sent to Cairo. My cover had been the wife of a successful businessman who had been transferred there by his company. How I hated these roles where I had to play the part of a dutiful and devoted spouse. This meant that I had to share the bed of a man who wasn’t my husband. Well, not strictly, in the Biblical sense. This was for the benefit of the servants, who would potentially gossip about our “marriage” to other servants if we didn’t keep up appearances.

  My “husband” had thought playing the part came with all marital benefits. I had made it clear he was wrong on
the first night when he had attempted to mount me. I had whispered in his ear that sex was not part of the package. As I said this, I had placed my right hand on the back of his neck, gently massaging it. He knew that if I put the right amount of pressure on his cranial nerve I could paralyse him. He hissed in my ear that I was a frigid bitch, but he rolled off me and, after that, kept to his side of the bed. His maleness invaded my very being – only another lesbian would have been able to comprehend my feelings. That is why I longed to wake up next to someone of my own sex, where I could reach out and not be truly repulsed.

  My “husband,” Martin Owens, was in reality James Cavendish, one of my colleagues in MI6. He had recently been recruited from 5, and he looked vaguely like Steve McQueen. Women often commented on this, and Cavendish lapped up the adoration from the other wives in the closed bubble of expat society.

  This was how I met her. We were at another boring cocktail party, this time held by the Deputy Ambassador of Italy at the Gezira Sporting Club, founded by the British in the 1880s as an elite club for polo-playing officers. If you didn’t have money or connections, admittance would be denied, as the joining and yearly fees were well out of the reach of the majority of Egyptians. The reception was to celebrate that Eni, the multinational oil and gas company whose headquarters were in Rome, had sealed a contract with the Egyptian government.

  Cavendish was holding court in the middle of the room with a bevy of wives, girlfriends and secretaries hanging on his every word. I noted with a degree of satisfaction that he had a small carpet burn on the left side of his nose. I could hear his braying laugh across the room and winced. At that precise moment, I loathed him, and myself, for agreeing to share the bed.

  Gezira, where the club is situated, is an island in the middle of Cairo – a green and leafy lung in the overcrowded, polluted and hectic city. Our mark lived in Zamalek, a five-minute drive from the club, and we had it on good authority that she would attend. We had been in Cairo for two months and had been frantically attending the never-ending rounds of parties and dinners that expats get invited to, all in order to meet her, and, always, she was a no-show. I fervently prayed that she would be there tonight, as I was becoming increasingly frustrated with the current situation. Every day it took me an hour to become Helen Owens. The tedium of my days had started to irritate and annoy me. I was in danger of becoming careless, as I desperately wanted an “out.”

  The overhead fans churned the still air. The temperature in the room must have been in the high 70s, but polite society in Egypt gave very little concession to heat. Men were wearing jackets and ties and women were wearing smart European cocktail dresses, although sweat was appearing on every brow including mine.

  I was wearing a chain store version of an Ossie Clark dress from last summer. Unlike the original, which was made from silk, mine was made from a synthetic material called rayon. It had a large pink ruffle around the plunging neckline and it was in hideous hues of pink. It was something I would never have chosen, and I suspected that one of the secretaries at Broadway had been sent to Debenhams, the well-known department store, in her lunch break to pick out a wardrobe for me.

  To add to my discomfort, I was wearing thick padding around my waist that was made of a wool mixture, as I needed to be 20 pounds heavier than my usual weight.

  Earlier this evening when I had been applying the final touches to my makeup, Cavendish had appeared directly behind me in the mirror and, with a condensing sneer in his voice, asked me “Why on earth did Martin Owens marry you? You’re so bloody ugly.”

  Looking in the mirror, I didn’t recognise myself: my hair was a shade of mousy brown, pulled back severely from my face and encased in a bun, and I was wearing heavy blue eye shadow and pink lipstick. A pair of large brown-rimmed bifocal spectacles completed my disguise.

  Cavendish’s contempt infuriated me. I knew men like that – male chauvinist pigs, who took pleasure in destroying a woman’s confidence and self-esteem with one sentence. Something inside of me snapped.

  He sneered again and shook his head, but he didn’t walk away from me. He couldn’t. I whirled round, clutched his shirt with my left hand and kneed him hard in the groin. He crumpled to the ground, groaning loudly, and placed both hands defensively between his legs. But I didn’t stop. Why should I? I grabbed the back of his perfectly coiffed hair and drove his face down into the Persian rug. He screamed with pain and probably fear.

  “Sinclair! Please don’t hurt me. Think of the mission – please…”

  The red mist evaporated as quickly as it had descended on me. I bent down and spoke quietly in his ear. “Don’t ever, ever fucking talk to me like that again. OK?”

  Cavendish nodded his head frantically. His face was puckered up, an unhealthy shade of puce. In all my years in the field, I don’t think that I had encountered such an arrogant fool as Cavendish. He drank too much, he played around with women and he was completely unreliable. As he struggled to hold back the tears that had formed in the corners of his eyes, I recalled one of my instructors lecturing me that women were more likely to risk all if the odds tilted against them. Yes, as usual Cavendish had seriously underestimated me, but I doubted he would do so again.

  His voice shook as he replied. “No, I won’t. I’m sorry, Sinclair.” I couldn’t resist delivering a sharp, vicious kick to his ribs as I walked away.

  I was standing by the window to try and get what little breeze there was in order to escape the stifling heat of the room and the smell of sweat mingled with expensive colognes and perfumes.

  I think she felt sorry for me. I was standing on the sidelines looking for the entire world to see like a rejected wife, while my “husband” commanded all the attention.

  She stood beside me and spoke softly. “Is it always like this?” She spoke English with no trace of an accent.

  I didn’t look in her direction. I spoke in a flat, hard voice. “Yes, always. I wonder why he married me.”

  “Do you love him?”

  I barely nodded my head. “That’s what makes it so hard.”

  She changed the subject. “Do you like Cairo?”

  I turned towards her and had to control my initial reaction, which would have been to tell her that she was beautiful. She was exactly my type and stood two inches shorter than me, with raven hair worn in a chignon, her olive skin smooth and unlined and her brown eyes radiating life. Her smile was bright and welcoming and it took my breath away.

  This was what I had been waiting for – my only chance of an “in.” If I fucked this up, then the mission would be aborted and it would be handed over to our “friends.”

  “Yes, but it’s a lonely place. I don’t really know anyone here. Well, only the women I bump into at these events.”

  Had she taken the hook?

  She smiled again. “Well, now you know me. My name is Amisi.”

  “What a beautiful name! What does it mean?”

  “A flower.” She gave a shy smile. “It’s a common name for girls in Egypt.”

  I decided to be bold. “I like it. My name’s Helen Owens and that’s my husband, Martin.”

  We shook hands, then laughed.

  “Would you like to come to my house for tea tomorrow afternoon?” she said in Arabic.

  Although I speak the language fluently, I gave no indication I understood. “I’m awfully sorry but I don’t understand Arabic … well, just hello and goodbye.”

  Amisi smiled, but this time it was more confident and certain. “You never know who speaks it these days.” She repeated the question she had asked moments ago.

  “I’d love to.”

  I had an opening. I had an in. I was in!

  Amisi had been supplying us with good quality Intel for six years, but in the last three months she had become increasingly nervous and had wanted out of the arrangement. As the wife of President Sadat’s deputy minister of defence, Amisi had access to Intel that was vital to the West and to Israel. Present Sadat’s brave and historic visit to
Israel in November 1977, had made him very unpopular with the rest of the Arab world. We had to know if there was any possibility of discord and discontent in his government and if there was a danger of a military coup. Sadat had a number of internal and external enemies who were looking to oust him from power, as he had not consulted the rest of the Arab world on his intentions to pursue peace. Subsequently Syria, Iraq, Libya, Algeria and South Yemen had met to discuss ways of stopping the Egyptian Israeli peace process. Sadat’s response was to cut diplomatic ties.

  Amisi had informed her handler that she would not, under any circumstances, work for the British again. No amount of reasoning and coercion could make her see sense. Would there be enough time for me to befriend her, get her to trust me and encourage her to continue her relationship with us?

  The next afternoon I had duly presented myself at her villa-style house in Zamalek. She had been a generous and entertaining host and had quickly put me at ease. The next day, we arranged to meet for lunch at the Shepheard Hotel in the Champollion Road. The Shepheard was as famous as Raffles in Singapore and the Ritz in London and it had been a bastion of international high society both pre- and post-war. These days, it was still popular for pre-dinner drinks as, from across the road, feluccas could be rented to cruise down the Nile. After four days, we met daily for lazy chatty afternoon lunches, drinking numerous pink gins and smoking the queen of cigarettes – Shepheards, named after the hotel – which Amisi introduced me to.

  Three weeks later, in the early hours of a Tuesday morning, I heard a noise from downstairs. Someone had tripped the alarm and was in the house. Automatically my hand closed around the grip of my Beretta, which I always kept under my pillow. I jabbed Cavendish with my elbow and hissed that we had an intruder. He grunted and rolled over, burying his head in the pillow. Just as I thought – he would be no help to me, as he had demolished half a bottle of gin at dinner. I rose and swiftly pulled on a robe. I made my way across the landing without a sound and peered through the half-gloom down into the lounge. I could hear a rustling sound. Keeping close to the wall, I made my way silently down the stairs. I could see the silhouette of a man, sitting with his back to me. Damn. Who was he? Why was he here? I steadied my breathing as I padded soundlessly towards him.