Page 68 of The Shadow Friends

There was a silence. Ben reached for the whisky bottle and tipped more scotch into their three glasses.

“You’re not going to tell me?” she said.

Ben set down the bottle with a thud. “We’re still considering that question. She’s almost certainly involved in all this, but how? We can’t imagine she would ever work for the other side.”

“Then why hasn’t she told you what she’s up to? For God’s sake, why hasn’t she told her own husband?”

“That’s what concerns us,” said Declan. “It makes her seem . . .”

“Deceptive,” said Ben.

And there it was, an open admission of what they feared. That their friend could not be trusted.

“You’ve known her a long time,” said Jo.

“Almost forty years now,” said Declan. “Since the four of us were in training. When Lloyd married Ingrid, he joined our circle and it became the five of us, through thick and thin. Even though we worked in different areas of the world. Even though there were things we couldn’t share, secrets we’ve sworn to take to our graves, we always believed we could rely on each other.”

“Now we have to wonder,” said Ben.

“Speak for yourself, Ben. I can’t believe Ingrid would turn against us, against her own country. If we can’t trust each other, who can we trust?”

Ben snorted. “When did you become Pollyanna?”

“I want to believe in the five of us, at least.”

“Five human beings, the world’s most untrustworthy species?”

“You’ve gotten cynical.”

“I’ve always been cynical. You’ve gone mushy.”

“Guys,” said Jo. “The subject is Ingrid, and can she be trusted.”

“Yes,” said Declan.

“Then why has she gone dark?” asked Ben.

“Because she can’t bring us into whatever this is. Maybe she’s not allowed to, or she’s afraid to. Or . . .” Declan paused. “Or she doesn’t trust us.”

Jo looked back and forth at the two men. “Any reason she might not?”

“Experience,” said Ben. “A bad one.” He picked up his glass and gulped down the whisky.

“What happened?”

“We don’t know all the particulars,” said Declan. “We know it happened in France. An operation that turned so disastrous, word of it was bound to spill out within the Agency, even though it was classified. Especially since two of our own people were killed, as well as a young woman they were supposed to be protecting.”

“How did it go wrong?”

“They realized too late that they had a double agent on their team. He leaked the location of the safe house where the young woman was being protected, and he was rewarded with a handsome payoff. Before the CIA could arrest him, he jumped on a plane to Moscow. He traded his own country, and the lives of two colleagues, for a boatload of cash. That’s what we were able to piece together, anyway, although Ingrid wouldn’t tell us the details.”

“Because it was classified?”

“Or it was too painful to talk about. Some memories are too awful to share.”

Jo sat in silence for a moment, staring down at the liquid gold in her glass, grateful that she had no such horrors in her own past.

“Do you have any clue why Ingrid left the country?”