The Trinity Six

Chapter 35

Late on Thursday afternoon, Sam Gaddis was squeezing through a pavement crush of students outside the School of Eastern European and Slavonic Studies when he spotted Tanya Acocella on the opposite side of Taviton Street. She was wearing a beige raincoat, leather boots and a beret which brought out the stark white bones of her face. He thought that she looked tired, but felt the irritating pang of attraction nonetheless; he had to remind himself to look annoyed as he crossed the street to speak to her.

‘I don’t suppose this is a coincidence.’

‘No,’ she said. ‘Walk with me?’

She was taking a risk, being seen with him. Brennan could have eyes all over UCL. A simple surveillance photograph of the two of them together, fed back to Vauxhall Cross, would reveal that she had ignored the Chief’s order to abandon contact with POLARBEAR.

‘I wondered how you were getting along,’ she asked.

Gaddis took the question at face value and said that he had been ‘fine, absolutely fine’ since the shootings in Berlin.

‘We’ve managed to come to an arrangement with the German authorities. They’ve put a squeeze on coverage of the incident in the media. The police won’t be looking for a second gunman. The man who killed Meisner, the man you shot, was a Russian named Nicolai Doronin. MI5 had been observing him for several months. The Germans know that he has links to the FSB, but they’re not expecting to pursue a complaint against Moscow. Doronin will make a full recovery and he’ll be turfed out of Berlin. He’ll know that if he tries to finger any of his colleagues in connection with the conspiracy, there’ll be repercussions for his family in London.’

‘What a lovely story,’ said Gaddis, taking out a cigarette. Tanya asked for one and he lit it for her as a student came up behind them, asked Gaddis a question about an essay deadline and then walked off towards Endsleigh Gardens.

‘The Berlin solution is the best you’re going to get,’ Tanya said, pointedly expecting some measure of thanks for the horse-trading SIS had done on Gaddis’s behalf.

‘I understand that,’ he said. ‘Believe me, I’m extremely grateful.’

They walked in silence. She was wondering how best to say what she had come to say.

‘You are being careful, aren’t you, Sam?’

‘Careful in what way?’

‘You understand the terms of our arrangement? You can’t go looking for Crane. You can’t go seeking vengeance for what happened to Meisner and Charlotte.’

She thought of Brennan lashing out at her in his office and wondered why she was being so considerate of Gaddis’s feelings. A pigeon settled on the pavement ahead of them, hopped into the path of a taxi turning into the road and flew off.

‘If you leave the country, the minute your passport is presented anywhere in the EU, they’ll know where to find you.’

Gaddis stopped and turned. ‘What do you mean “they”?’

‘I’ve been removed from the operation. Pastures new. Brennan has a new team working on you.’

He was confused. Did she want his sympathy?

‘Why have they taken you off the case?’

‘Long story.’ Gaddis felt that she might have been about to explain, but instead Tanya merely reiterated her earlier warning. ‘It doesn’t matter who’s running you now. The terms of the arrangement are the same. Don’t go looking for Crane. Do you understand?’

Gaddis tried his best to convince her. ‘I have told you,’ he replied. ‘I understand, Tanya.’

She didn’t like to see him lying; it didn’t suit him.

‘It’s just that Robert Wilkinson may not be in New Zealand for ever,’ she said. ‘We wondered whether you might already know that. We wanted to be absolutely certain that you wouldn’t make any attempt to see him if, for example, he came to Vienna.’

Gaddis could only laugh, but it was a hollow sound, a breathless, near-silent surrender to the omnipotence of SIS. They had eyes and ears everywhere; they were listening to everything he said, even to a phone box on the edge of a housing estate in South Africa Road.

‘Wilkinson doesn’t want to have anything to do with me,’ he said. He dropped his half-smoked cigarette on to the ground and snuffed it out with his shoe. ‘Crane has disappeared. Even if I wanted to finish the book, I don’t have any more leads. It’s over.’

‘We both know that’s not quite true.’ He marvelled at her ability to convince him that she was still on his side. Perhaps it was the outfit: she looked so elegant, so off-duty, every inch the beautiful, available, seductive Josephine Warner.

‘You’re right,’ he said. ‘I could go to Vienna. I could gate-crash Catherine’s wedding. I could grab Bob Wilkinson over a smoked salmon canape and ask him to tell me all about Dresden, just as a favour to an academic that he doesn’t know and doesn’t even particularly like. Do you really think that’s what I’m planning to do?’

‘I think you’re capable of anything.’

Gaddis reached out and held her. ‘You need to trust me,’ he said. Her arms were gym-exercised, taut and wiry. ‘Check your surveillance records. I’m going to be in Barcelona for the rest of the month. I’ve arranged to spend a fortnight with Min.’

‘You have?’

Tanya was no longer privy to the POLARBEAR product; it was infuriating not to know even this simple piece of information.

‘I have,’ he said. ‘So if Des feels like following me, tell him to pack his swimming trunks. My daughter and I will be spending a lot of time at the beach.’