Dead Line

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In his flat near the British Embassy in Nicosia, Peter Templeton woke early. For a few minutes he lay staring at the ladder pattern on the wall of his bedroom made by the sun shining through the Venetian blinds. Then, with an anticipatory jolt, he remembered the message he’d received yesterday: the codeword from Jaghir that called him to an urgent meeting. Templeton was MI6’s head of station in Cyprus, and Jaghir was one of his most important agents.

There was little traffic in Nicosia this early, so when Templeton’s black saloon pulled out of the car park beneath his block of flats it had the street to itself. But within thirty seconds a small, battered hatchback swung round a corner and began to follow closely behind the saloon.

The two cars went south through the old walled city, a cautious convoy, avoiding the UN Green Line and the Turkish sector in the north. They took the narrow side streets, past old stone houses with ornate balconies, their tall wooden shutters still firmly closed, and shops that were not yet open for business. Driving through an opening in the old Venetian wall, former boundary of a once much smaller city, they crossed the Pedieos River. The two cars proceeded carefully, their drivers alert and tense; another vehicle could have followed their labyrinthine progress, but not without being detected.

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