The Geneva Trap

Chapter 58

Liz spent two days in hospital in Marseilles, but except for bruises and abrasions she was remarkably unscathed – physically. She didn’t tell anyone at the hospital about the fear she felt every time she closed her eyes and imagined she was back in the van. But a nurse had noticed the terror in her eyes when she’d woken her up to take her blood pressure and had mentioned it to the doctor. He had discussed it with Martin, who visited every day, but at his request they had not told Liz that they knew how frightened she was feeling.

‘She is proud and strong and wants to conquer it herself. If she can’t, she’ll tell me when she’s ready,’ Martin had said. The doctor had shaken his head, but knowing that this patient would soon be returning to England, he had done as he was asked.

Now, back in London and at work, the terrors were gradually fading. Peggy had offered to come and stay but Liz had turned her down. ‘Thanks, Peggy. That’s really kind but I’ll be fine,’ she’d said. And she thought she would be, though she knew she’d only be truly better when Kubiak had been caught.

She spoke on the phone every evening to Martin in Paris. He was in close touch with Isobel and Fézard in Marseilles, but though there was a general alert out, there had as yet been no sign of Kubiak or his car. Unbeknown to Liz, Martin was also in touch with DG. He had told him what the doctor at the hospital in Marseilles had said about the trauma she had suffered, and DG had put a very discreet protective ring of trusted colleagues around Liz.

Geoffrey Fane, who seemed to find reasons for frequent visits to Thames House, reported that the Russians persisted in denying any involvement in the infiltration of the Ministry of Defence and had gone completely quiet on the subject of Anatole Kubiak.

In the shallow waters at the edge of Lake Geneva the police frogman missed twice with his hook, thrashing against the water in vain. Third time lucky, he caught the collar of the jacket and drew the thing gingerly towards his two colleagues standing on the shore. When the body reached the gravel, they each grabbed an arm and dragged it up a ramp, where they laid it on its back.

It had first been noticed at about six in the morning by an early dog walker, but by the look of it, it had been in the lake for many hours. The policemen gazing down at it now were used to corpses – fishing them out of the water was almost routine. But this one was more repellant than most. Its jaw sagged open and the skin round its Adam’s apple was shrivelled and hanging loose. But above that was only a hideous, sodden mass of bone and flesh. There was no face at all. It looked as though something had smashed it to pulp, and the fish had completed what someone else had begun.

Something odd had happened to the jacket too – both sleeves had been slit from the cuffs up to the elbows. The reason soon became clear: the shirt sleeves were shredded and blood had soaked into them. When they pulled the fabric away from the arms, they could see a series of deep cuts, made with a knife or a razor. There was dried blood on the crotch of the body’s trousers as well.

‘I’ve never seen anything like this before,’ said one of the policemen, his face screwed up with disgust. ‘The guy’s been tortured.’

Geoffrey Fane’s face appeared round Liz’s office door.

Oh, God. Not again, she thought. But he said, ‘I have news from Switzerland that you’ll want to hear.’

‘You’d better come in and sit down. What is it?’

Fane was smiling, clearly enjoying himself. ‘Russell White phoned from Geneva an hour ago. The Swiss police pulled a body out of the lake this morning. They’re fairly sure it’s Kubiak. It wasn’t pretty. Apparently he’d been tortured and then shot in the face with a soft-nosed bullet. You know what that means, I suppose.’

‘I do,’ she replied with a shudder. ‘It’s classic KGB.’

‘Some things never change with our Russian friends. But you see the implication. He was a traitor. Whatever he was doing with the Koreans was unauthorised. He must have killed them all in a panic when he thought he’d been discovered.’

Liz sighed. ‘It must have started to go wrong for him when he blurted out to Sorsky that there was an informant in the MOD. After that he knew he could never be safe, and neither was Sorsky.’ She added, ‘Nor was I – if Kubiak saw me meeting him, that is, which I think he must have done.’ She paused, thinking of the stocky man she had seen before her first meeting with Sorsky. ‘I wonder if we’ll ever know what this was really all about.’

‘Let’s see what our friend Kirov says,’ said Fane. ‘He’ll know the Swiss have found the body. In fact, it was clearly left for them to find, so he’s sure to have some explanation.’

‘If only Kubiak had kept his mouth shut, nothing would have happened to Alexander Sorsky.’

‘Then we wouldn’t have learned about Park Woo-jin and the threat to the Clarity programme.’

Liz knew he was right. In the greater scheme of things, Sorsky was simply the price that had to be paid for detecting a real threat to UK and US security. But it didn’t make her feel any better about it.