No Kiss For The Devil

19

‘You should kick this job into the long grass.’ Palmer was looking grim.

After picking up Riley, they had decided to go to Donald Brask’s Finchley base for a conference. Palmer had just finished relaying Pell’s revelation about the murder of Annaliese Kellin. It had left a charged atmosphere in the room.

‘Why?’ Although shocked by the news, Riley instinctively challenged the notion of backing off from a job. Any job. ‘Are you going to let Helen’s murder go?’

‘That’s different.’

‘Crap,’ she replied with mild bluntness. ‘Pell’s jumping to conclusions. There might be no connection between the two murders. It could be random. Annaliese Kellin may have simply picked the wrong car for a lift.’

It was Palmer’s turn to look cynical. ‘She was tied up. That doesn’t sound very random to me.’

Riley shook her head obstinately and glared at him, daring further argument. She’d had the same thought herself. She switched her attention to Brask, who had remained quiet while Palmer was speaking.

The agent held up both hands. ‘Sweetie, I’m on your side. But Frank’s so right.’

‘I disagree. If there’s a connection here, it would be better if I was on the inside.’

Donald opened his mouth then shut it again. Instead, he changed the subject. ‘There’s something you should both know. The publisher’s address you sent me is a post box in a run-down residential block. Most of the flats are empty or used by illegals.’

Riley stared at him. ‘How did you find that out?’

He looked pleased with himself. ‘Contacts, sweetie. As always, contacts.’

‘How reliable are they?’ Even as she asked, Riley knew that it was a pointless question. The credentials of Donald’s various sources of information were impeccable.

Donald, however, seemed unmoved. ‘Totally. His name is Tony Nemeth. He discovered that at various times of the month, a parcel is collected along with any other mail, bundled and forwarded to London.’ He studied his fingernails, playing the part of the all-seeing puppeteer to the full. ‘The package is sent to a PO Box in London, which is the same as the editorial office listed in the magazine. That turns out to be a mailing facility in north London.’ He slid a piece of paper across his desk to Frank Palmer. ‘I don’t know what you can do with this, but I understand the packages arrive courtesy of an Aeroflot flight into the Heathrow cargo terminal. They’re delivered to the mailing facility and presumably split up there. I haven’t had time to check yet, but I suspect the Madrid and Brussels PO Boxes feed into London. They’re probably no more than a bit of gloss for impressionable readers.’

Riley glanced at Frank, who was staring intently at the ceiling.

‘You’ve lost me,’ she said. ‘If this magazine is a hole-in-the-wall affair, how can it pay the kind of money Varley is offering? And who reads it?’

Donald cleared his throat. ‘Well, to answer your first question, every magazine throughout history which continued against all the odds was usually bankrolled by someone with plenty of money. There’s no way round it. As to the readers of this one, by all accounts, there are some very influential people.’

‘Like?’

‘People in the White House…some Whitehall mandarins, and I gather a few copies are read avidly in the halls of the Elysee Palace and some of the darker corridors in Bonn, Rome and Brussels. It’s available on annual subscription, and only then at a high price. It would have to be, because the subscriber base is probably restricted and exclusive.’

Riley nodded. ‘That’s what Varley implied. I’ve never heard of it.’

‘Perhaps you weren’t meant to.’

Riley looked puzzled. ‘I still don’t get it.’

‘I think it’s designed,’ said Donald, ‘to disseminate information from the East for consumption by eager little eyes in the West.’

‘The purpose being?’ Palmer had returned to earth.

‘Entente. Understanding. Hands across frontiers, call it what you will. It’s not the first one ever published. Storm was one, allegedly with links to Soviet Intelligence, but never proved. That was during the sixties, put out via India. Soviet Time was another. They served a noble purpose — on the surface.’

‘Which was?’

‘To help spread understanding. To make us feel comfortable in our beds at night.’

‘And otherwise?’

‘Cynics would say they were used to tell us simpletons in the West only what the Kremlin wanted us to know.’ He shrugged. ‘The old guard may have gone, but the game hasn’t changed. Publications just like it are still around, telling us things the current powers would like us to know without appearing to. They don’t have to turn a profit, at least, not in the usual sense, because that’s not the aim.’

‘Especially,’ murmured Palmer, ‘if they’re run by wealthy individuals with the quiet connivance of the state. Nice arrangement.’

Donald nodded. ‘Smoke and mirrors.’

‘God, you two are cynical,’ Riley said darkly.

‘True, sweetie. But we’re also right.’ Donald reached across to his desk and picked up another piece of paper, which he passed across to her. ‘I’ve done some digging. This lady is a lecturer in Russian and Post-Soviet studies at the London School of Economics. Worth a visit, I think. She agreed tomorrow at two.’

Riley read the name off the paper. ‘Natalya Fisher? Sounds like a ballet dancer.’

‘She was probably that, too, in her time,’ he said enigmatically. ‘She came to the west twenty years ago and married a British scientist. She’ll tell you more about the Russian mindset in fewer words than anyone else I know. There’s a chance she might point you somewhere useful.’

‘You make her sound as if she has some special knowledge in this area,’ said Palmer.

‘Well, I suppose she has.’ Donald beamed, before dropping his bombshell. ‘In a former life, Natalya Fisher was a KGB officer.’