Red Station

SIXTEEN

‘ Something bugging you?’ Harry dumped coffee powder in a mug. Rik was poking about in the back of a computer monitor.

Rik shook his head. ‘Just… stuff.’

Harry looked round. Clare Jardine had gone out and Fitzgerald was with Mace in his office, going over a destruction plan if the Russians did arrive. ‘It sounded more than stuff.’ He poured water and stirred the mix, waiting.

Rik dropped the screwdriver he was using and stood up, flicking a glance at the door to the connecting office. He came over and made himself some tea, jabbing at a teabag as if stabbing it to death.

‘We’re being watched, you know that?’ His voice was tight.

‘Who by?’ It wouldn’t have surprised Harry, not after the last few days.

‘I call them the Clones.’ Rik looked at him, eyes bright. ‘There’s a team of four. Fitz said he might have seen them… Clare thinks she did, although I reckon she was taking the piss. Nobody wants to talk about it. Mace thinks I’m delusional.’

Harry held up his hand to halt the rush of words. ‘Whoa, slow down. Who are these… Clones?’

‘Local security police, I guess. All I know is, they’re watching us. Christ, that makes me sound paranoid.’ He laughed nervously and Harry realised he must have been itching to talk about this for some time.

‘Go on.’

‘There’s four, right? Never more, sometimes less… but I reckon it’s because they’re on a rota system… two on, two off kind of thing.’

‘Thanks,’ said Harry dryly. ‘I get the concept.’

‘Sorry. Forgot. Anyway, they’re always hanging about, sometimes on foot, sometimes in a car down the street.’ He sipped his tea and winced at the heat. ‘Shit. I’ve even had them show up outside my place.’

‘What do they look like?’ Harry decided to keep it as calm as possible. If he really had spotted a team of watchers, it meant they’d undoubtedly now added his face to the collection of spooks in this building. Interesting, but not unusual. The Russians had already accused British Council staff of fomenting trouble among local minority groups. Other local intelligence organizations probably held similar views.

‘Youngish, about thirty… fit-looking, jeans and street clothes — and shaven heads, although that’s pretty much par for the course around here.’ He grinned quickly. ‘A short back and sides in this town is short all over.’

The description fitted half the men Harry had seen so far. Including the watcher at the airport.

‘No special characteristics?’

‘Not that I’ve noticed. Sorry.’ He looked at Harry as if weighing up whether he’d been believed or not.

Harry put down his mug. ‘Come on. Time for a cup of real coffee.’

‘What?’

‘We’re going walkabout, see if we can spot one of these Clones.’ He wasn’t sure why he should care, but it was better than doing nothing.

He led the way downstairs. On the way out, he picked up a large brown envelope and handed it to Rik, with instructions to make his way to the railway station. ‘Walk normally. If you clock one, don’t do anything, just keep going as if you’re on a boring errand. I’ll see you there.’

‘Where will you be?’

‘Closer than you think.’

He waited for Rik to clear the end of the street, then slipped outside and followed at a discreet distance.

He picked up the first watcher a hundred yards out.

Heavy rain clouds had closed in on the town overnight, dumping a blanket of cold drizzle on the streets and filling the paper-choked gullies. Potholes were invisible under a covering of water, and Harry hugged the buildings to avoid a drenching from passing trucks.

The first man he saw fitted Rik’s description to the letter: young, lean, anonymous, bristle-cut hair and nothing to mark him out. He wore a scruffy denim jacket, patched jeans and trainers, and hunched against the cold rain; he would have been invisible in any crowd.

He was also good at following a target.

Five minutes later Harry spotted another likely contender. This one appeared out of a shop doorway across the street. He sloped along, keeping Rik in his sights without losing pace. If there were any signals exchanged between him and his colleague, they kept them discreet.

The railway station was a heavy concrete structure with no pretensions of style, a plain, arched entrance and few windows. Like a brick shithouse with trains, thought Harry. He walked on by, allowing the first Clone to follow Rik inside. The other man had disappeared, and Harry guessed he had gone to cover the other exits. If there were any more on the job, they were keeping well back.

Once out of sight of the station entrance, Harry stopped and counted to fifty before doubling back. He passed a cheap clothes shop on a corner and ducked inside. When he came out he was wearing a waterproof ski hat pulled down over his ears.

The inside of the station was noisy, damp and unwelcoming, with a cold wind cutting through the concourse and tugging at a row of pennants strung across the front of the ticket office. Stalls selling hot drinks and snacks were doing a good trade, and he stopped at the nearest to buy a coffee and get his bearings.

He spotted Rik hovering by a stall selling nuts and dried fruit. He was holding the envelope and digging in his pocket for some coins. He looked at ease, a man on a minor errand, and Harry was impressed; from his earlier display of nerves, Rik was coping well with being thrown into the role of a decoy.

Clone One was loitering nearby, nibbling on an apple while reading the timetables, but rarely taking his eyes off Rik for more than a few moments. It was a few seconds before Harry realized that the man was speaking into a thumb-microphone.

Clone Two must be close.

Harry stayed where he was, using the other customers as cover. He had no chance of blending into the background; his clothes, although fairly nondescript, were still sufficiently different in cut and style to make him stand out if anyone looked at him carefully enough. And if he went walkabout in such a confined area, he’d be spotted immediately.

It wasn’t long before he realized that the other Clone hadn’t put in an appearance. He soon saw why: the man was behind him, in the shelter of a doorway. He could feel his eyes on the back of his neck.

Harry finished his coffee and dumped the mug in a rubbish bin. He’d slipped up; the man had spotted him as a newcomer, and therefore an oddity. Or maybe they had pictures and had picked him out the moment he showed up.

He nodded a thank you to the stallholder and walked away, taking him on a course which would pass close by Rik’s position. As he drew level, he raised his hand close to his chest and pointed towards the exit.

Rik blinked once to show he understood.

Twenty minutes later, after taking a circuitous route through the town, Harry arrived back at the office to find Rik already there nursing a cup of coffee. He looked unsettled, and Harry guessed he probably hadn’t done this kind of thing since basic training.

‘Did I do OK?’ asked Rik nervously. ‘I don’t think they clocked you, did they?’

‘You did fine.’ Harry wasn’t about to tell him that he had been made, or that identifying two of the Clones wasn’t bad. But it wasn’t great. Somewhere in the background, unless they were resting, the other Clones had been operating unseen. If so, they would have identified him, but he had no idea what they looked like.

For now, though, he had other things to think about. On the way back, he had passed an alleyway with an army truck parked in the entrance. Near the rear of the truck stood three men. Two were in uniform, although he couldn’t see any insignia. The other man was in civilian clothes, and handing out cigarettes, chatting amiably. It was an everyday scene, even given the military presence.

The only anomaly was the civilian.

Harry wondered how Carl Higgins of Ohio had become so fluent in the local language.