The Trinity Six

Chapter 24

Gaddis was standing in the same room in which he had learned of Charlotte’s death, but his reaction on this occasion was quite different. He hung up the phone, turned towards the shelves of books which lined one side of his cramped office and experienced a sensation of pure fear. For a long time he was almost motionless, his stalled brain trying to deny the inescapable logic of what he had been told. If Calvin Somers had been murdered, Charlotte had most probably been killed by the same assailants. That meant that his own life was in danger and that Neame and Ludmilla Tretiak were also threatened. Gaddis found that he began to think about himself in the third person, as an entity separate and distinct from his own familiar, protected existence; it was some kind of brain trick, an atavistic impulse to deny the truth of his predicament. But the truth was inescapable. Whoever had killed Somers would now surely direct their attention towards him.

He continued to stare blankly at the bookshelves, his eyes jumping from spine to spine. Should he go to the police? Could he claim that Charlotte had been murdered? Who would believe him? There had been no evidence of foul play at the house in Hampstead. Charlotte had a weak heart and an unhealthy lifestyle; that was it. Besides, she had been cremated; it was too late to carry out an autopsy. Gaddis did not know why Somers had been killed or who had perpetrated the act. His best guess was Russian intelligence, but why murder a man simply for knowing that Edward Crane’s death had been faked by MI6? The British themselves might be involved, but would they kill one of their own citizens simply for breaking the terms of the Official Secrets Act? It didn’t seem likely.

He tried to clear his mind. He tried to be logical. Fact: the Russian espiocracy was systematically eradicating anybody with links to ATTILA. But if that was the case, why had the embassy in London given him a tourist visa ten days earlier, no questions asked, allowing him to pass unchecked through Sheremetyevo? This small thought offered Gaddis a brief moment of solace until he realized that there was every chance the FSB could have deliberately allowed him to fly into Russia in order to follow him around Moscow and to isolate his contacts. If that was the case, he would have led them straight to Ludmilla. Turning from the bookshelves, he opened the window of his office, inhaled a lungful of dank London air and stared up at a black, pre-rain sky. It felt as though he had no moves left; the conspiracy was too large, the main players either dead or far beyond his reach. Who could he talk to who might be able to shed light on what was happening?

Neame.

Gaddis grabbed his jacket and bag, locked his office and took the Tube to Waterloo. He called Peter from a phone box near the ticket hall but the number still wasn’t picking up. A Winchester train, scheduled for 11.39, was sitting on Platform 6, adjacent to a Guildford service which departed five minutes later. With what he hoped would be a successful tactic for shaking off any surveillance, Gaddis walked on to the Guildford train, sat on a fold-down chair beside the automatic doors, then moved quickly across the platform at 11.38 to join the Winchester service. He was not able to determine whether or not he had been followed, but the train moved off within thirty seconds and he sat back in his seat with the dawning realization that his life was about to take on a quality of evasion and trickery for which he was far from prepared.

An hour later he was trying Peter again from a phone box outside Winchester station. This time, he picked up. The sound of his voice felt like the first piece of good fortune Gaddis had experienced in weeks.

‘Peter? It’s Sam. I need to see our friend. Now.’

‘I’ll call you back.’

The line went dead. Gaddis was left standing in a phone booth which stank of piss and unwashed men. He opened the door to allow fresh air to funnel inside from the road and as he waited, leaning his body against the worn, age-frosted glass, he realized that he was no longer pursuing Crane for the money. This wasn’t about alimony any more, or tax bills or school fees. It was purely a question of survival; without the book in the public domain, he was a dead man.

The phone rang. Gaddis grabbed at the receiver before the first ring had even finished.

‘Sam?’

‘Yes?’

‘It’s not going to be possible today. Afraid the old man’s not feeling too good. Head cold.’

Ordinarily, Gaddis would have been polite enough to offer his sympathy, but not this time. Instead he forced the point, raising his voice to impress upon Peter the importance of setting up the meeting.

‘I don’t really give a shit if he’s feeling unwell. When he hears what I have to tell him, believe me, he’ll be relieved he’s only got a cold.’

‘It’s more than that, I’m afraid.’ Peter was calmly changing his story. ‘Running a temperature, as well. Confined to his bed at the home.’

‘And where is the home?’

‘I’m afraid I can’t tell you that.’

‘Can you tell me this, then? Can you tell me why Calvin Somers has been murdered?’

‘Calvin who?’

‘Never mind.’ There was no point entering into an argument with Neame’s gatekeeper, no matter how much satisfaction it might have given Gaddis to vent his anger. Instead, he asked if he had a pen.

‘I do.’

‘Then write this down. Tell Tom that Calvin Somers has been killed.’ He spelled out the name. ‘Charlotte Berg was also murdered. The way things are going, Tom could be next.’

‘Jesus.’ It was the first time that Gaddis had sensed Peter losing his cool. ‘You’re not leading these people to us, are you, Sam?’

Gaddis ignored the question. ‘There’s more,’ he said. ‘Ludmilla Tretiak’ — again, he had to spell out the name — ‘has been personally instructed by Sergei Platov never to discuss ATTILA. Tretiak is almost certainly under FSB surveil-lance. There’s a link with Crane’s time in Dresden, but I’m not sure what it is. Ask Tom if he can find anything in the memoirs about Crane’s activities in East Germany in the late 1980s. Charlotte’s computer hard drives were deliberately wiped. Somebody knew that she was on to Crane. Tell him all of this.’

‘It sounds like something you should be telling him in person,’ Peter replied, and for a moment Gaddis thought that he had breached his defences sufficiently for a meeting to be arranged. But he was to be disappointed. ‘I just don’t think Tom’s going to be up to this for the next couple of days. Any chance you could be down here at the weekend?’

‘I’m going to Berlin at the weekend,’ Gaddis replied. He had made the decision on the train and would rack up the cost on a credit card. Benedict Meisner was now his sole remaining chance of a breakthrough. ‘Monday?’

‘Monday,’ Peter confirmed. ‘You get to the cathedral by eleven, I promise we’ll be there.’