The Trinity Six

Chapter 25

Now Gaddis had to gamble.

Was there a chance that Russian intelligence might have linked him to Calvin? Was he next in the line of fire? If Moscow had been listening to Somers’s telephone calls, bugging his office at the Mount Vernon or analysing his email traffic, then the answer was almost certainly ‘yes’. If his own Internet activity had been under any kind of scrutiny, either by the FSB or GCHQ, the myriad searches he had performed for information about Edward Crane would almost certainly have been flagged up and reacted upon.

There was less reason to believe that British or Russian intelligence could have tied him to Charlotte’s investigation. True, they had discussed the Cambridge book at supper in Hampstead, but they had not spoken about it on the telephone nor exchanged any emails after that night. It was the same with Ludmilla Tretiak: Gaddis had been careful to leave no email or telephone footprint prior to his visit. Unless the FSB had deliberately lured him to Moscow in order to track his movements, his meeting with Tretiak should have passed unnoticed.

Other factors seemed to be working in his favour. Somers had been killed more than two weeks earlier. Charlotte had been dead for over a month. If the Russians were going to come for him, they would surely have come already. As long as he remained vigilant, as long as he avoided making any further references to Crane or ATTILA on his computers or phones, he would surely be safe. But was it dumb to go home? Christ, was Min in danger in Barcelona? That thought, more than the threat to his own safety, left Gaddis with a feeling of complete powerlessness. Yet what could he do? If they wanted to get to Min or Natasha, they could do so at a moment’s notice. If they wanted to silence him, they could strike at any time. It would make no difference if he moved into a hotel, slept at Holly’s apartment, or emigrated to Karachi. Sooner or later, the FSB would track him down. Besides, he didn’t want to be driven out of his home by a bunch of gangsters; that was cowardice, pure and simple. He would rather stay and confront them; to give in was another kind of suicide. He would never be able to go back to his old life while the men who had killed Charlotte and Somers were still at large. What would Min make of him if he did that? What would she think of a father who had run?

Several hours passed before Gaddis allowed himself to think that he was perhaps overreacting. There was, after all, every possibility that Charlotte had died of natural causes. As for Somers, people were knifed in London all the time. Who was to say that Calvin hadn’t just been the wrong man in the wrong place at the wrong time? True, the coincidence of their sudden deaths, so recent and so close together, was unsettling, but Gaddis had no proof of foul play beyond a hunch that the Russian government was bumping off anybody associated with ATTILA.

What happened next restored his faith still further. While booking a flight to Berlin at an Internet cafe on Uxbridge Road, Gaddis saw, to his consternation, that Ludmilla Tretiak had made contact on the email address which he had given to her in Moscow.

The message had gone into his Spam folder, perhaps because it was written in Russian. Dear Dr Gaddis I am sending you this message from a friend’s computer using her email address so I hope that it will not be discovered. I enjoyed talking to you when we met. I feel that I must thank you for bringing to my attention new information concerning my husband’s death. I am in a position now to be able to help you further. You may already know that the MI6 Head of Station in Berlin while my husband was working in East Germany was Robert Wilkinson. Fyodor also knew him by the alias Dominic Ulvert. I do not know what use you will be able to make of this information, if any. But you asked me who else in Berlin might have known Mr Edward Crane and it seems likely to me that this man would have been in contact with the most senior officer from British Intelligence working in Berlin at that time. This is all that I can think of at present which may be of assistance to you. But I could see in Moscow how dedicated you were to solving this mystery and your enthusiasm touched me.

It could have been a trap, of course, an attempt by the FSB to lure him into a meeting with a non-existent former SIS officer. Yet the slightly breathless, dreamy tone of the email sounded like Tretiak, and offered hope that she remained unharmed.

He looked again at the screen. Finding a loose scrap of paper in his trouser pocket, Gaddis scribbled down the names ‘Robert Wilkinson’ and ‘Dominic Ulvert’ and tried to remember if he had seen them before, either in Charlotte’s files or in the boxes which Holly had given to him. He couldn’t recall. He knew that there was a risk in trusting Tretiak and that his natural optimism was both a strength and a weakness at times like this, but there was no way he could ignore what she had told him. The information was crying out to be investigated. At the very least, he could ask Josephine Warner to run the names through the Foreign Office archives. Where was the harm in that?

Gaddis rang her an hour later from a payphone on Uxbridge Road.

‘Josephine?’

‘Sam! I was just thinking about you.’

‘Good thoughts, I hope,’ he said. ‘How are things down at Kew?’

They briefly exchanged pleasantries but Gaddis wasn’t in the mood for small talk. He was keen to secure Josephine’s help in tracking down the information.

‘Do you think you could do me a favour?’

‘Of course.’

‘Next time you’re at work, could you see if there’s anything in the records about a Foreign Office diplomat named Robert Wilkinson? If that doesn’t work, try Dominic Ulvert. Anything you can get on them at all. Letters, minutes from meetings in which they were involved, conferences they may have attended. Anything.’

It was only the second time that they had spoken since their dinner in Brackenbury Village and Gaddis was aware that his manner was direct and businesslike. It surprised him when Josephine suggested getting together a second time.

‘I can have a look,’ she replied. ‘In fact, why don’t we have another supper? This one on me. I can bring copies of any documents I find.’

‘That would be incredibly kind.’

And suddenly Gaddis’s memories were no longer of Josephine’s strange, withdrawn behaviour on the Goldhawk Road, but of her face across the candlelit table at dinner, promising something with her eyes.

‘I’m afraid I’m busy this weekend,’ she said. ‘Next week would be easier if you’re around.’

‘Why? What are you doing this weekend?’

‘Well, thanks to you, I finally got my act together.’

‘Thanks to me?’

‘You made me feel so guilty about not visiting my sister, I invited myself to stay. I’m leaving for Berlin tomorrow.’

He reflected on the serendipity of the coincidence. ‘That’s extraordinary. I just booked a flight to Berlin this afternoon. We’ll be there at the same time.’

‘You’re kidding?’ Josephine sounded genuinely excited at the prospect; perhaps her ‘complicated’ boyfriend had not been invited along for the trip. ‘Then let’s meet up. Let’s do something at the weekend.’

‘I’d love that.’

Gaddis told her where he would be staying — ‘a Novotel near the Tiergarten’ — and they made a tentative plan to have dinner on Saturday evening.

He couldn’t believe his luck.