Timebomb

Chapter 11

He was numbed and quiet. Carrick sat in the apartment’s kitchen. The grandmother moved around him, but it was as if he weren’t there. A coffee mug had been placed on the table near to his elbow, and he had nodded but was not acknowledged. The grandmother spent her time washing dishes and saucepans in the sink, then drying them and putting them in cupboards. Afterwards she prepared a meal, peeled vegetables and stripped cold meat off a bone. He believed her to be wary of him, but felt her suspicion was ingrained, not personal.

When she had made his coffee, she had taken a tray — four mugs and a steaming pot — out of the kitchen and had been gone two or three minutes. Carrick had not moved from his chair at the table. Reuven and Mikhail, his Bossman and Viktor were in another room, If a door was opened he could hear their faint voices, but the language used was beyond him. Mikhail had brought the tray back.

He had carried it into the kitchen and put it on the draining-board. Carrick would have expected some brief expression of thanks — obvious, whatever the language used — and then for Mikhail to go back to the meeting. He did not. Carrick watched him. Mikhail rinsed the coffee dregs from the mugs and sluiced the pot, then took a cloth and dried them, did it with care, and placed the mugs on a shelf in a cupboard. Carrick saw this as a slight but unmistakable sign of servitude.

What thoughts were in his mind revolved on the racing, spinning tip of the drill. Carrick could not have said how close he had been to confession — shouting, screaming, anything to get the hand holding the drill to move back and away from his kneecap. If he had made that confession he would have gained himself a minute, a few minutes, a half-hour, of life, but by now he would be dead. Too right. Dumped. A ditch, a shallow grave. So, the closeness of it had numbed him, left him quiet.

They taught in SCD10 that an undercover, when pressured by suspicion, should not try to twist his way out but should turn and confront. ‘Change the direction,’ one instructor had preached, ‘throw it bloody back at them, deflect their attack, make them answer some bloody questions.’

‘Be outraged at the very thought of their accusation being true,’ another instructor had said.

Everyone worth listening to on the courses reckoned that an undercover, working with level-three criminality, would find his legend threatened and must hit back.

His kneecap would have been pierced, no doubt about it. Adrenaline had exploded in his mouth — the pure instinct of survival, not planned but made on the hoof — and then the soft response, in words he hadn’t understood, of Reuven Weissberg.

He could still feel the grip of Reuven Weissberg’s fist on his coat, and had known that he would have stumbled, might have fallen, crossing the wasteground from the warehouse to the car. Mikhail stood in front of him, and seemed to eye Carrick.

Carrick stared back. If the grandmother had not been there, Carrick reckoned Mikhail might have spat in his face. Wouldn’t have dared to, not in her presence. On-the-hoof decisions were accepted by a cover officer and a control in SCD10. There was acceptance that no damn manual could legislate for the unexpected crisis, and a crisis was having a cordless drill with a hand on the trigger, the tip spinning a few inches from a kneecap. If he hadn’t seen the puckered wound of a bullet’s entry, when Reuven Weissberg had discarded his coat, if … But he had. The accusation had not been thought through, and it had saved him. Now, the adrenaline was long drained out, and the numbness had taken hold.

Carrick could recall the words, the sounds, that he had not understood, Enough and Free him, and he had seen Mikhail’s eyes in that dance of disbelief, had heard Josef Goldmann’s weeping, but it was Reuven Weissberg who had stood, come to the chair and waved Mikhail back. Then Viktor had loosed the straps and lifted him from it.

He thought Reuven Weissberg had saved him from the pain of the drill and then had saved his life. He sat in the chair at the table and gazed down at the dregs in the bottom of the mug. He would not have survived but for the intervention of Reuven Weissberg. He had felt the strength of the man through the leather jacket’s sleeve, had seen the strength of the eyes, had heard the soft command of the voice — and owed his life to that man.

Mikhail said, ‘I am to tell you that we move on in the evening.’

Carrick shrugged, acknowledged, but did not speak. Did not press for explanation — where, when, why? He thought Mikhail believed nothing of his denial, and that an enemy had been made. Carrick presumed that the outside of the block was watched. They had found him in the night, which meant that a surveillance team was in place, and he presumed, also, that they had been outside the warehouse. They had not intervened. He had been a second, two seconds, from having a drill pierce his kneecap. But for the quiet words spoken by Reuven Weissberg, he was meat, beaten and bloodless.

Carrick had lost count of how many times he had studied the last undissolved grains of coffee in the mug. He lifted his eyes and found the picture. He searched among the depths and darkness of the trees but could not find no meaning there. The only meaning he knew was that Reuven Weissberg, not those who had sent him, was his protector.

She packed his bag, always did. ‘Do you want him as a trifle, a bauble, because he belongs to someone else?’

He stood beside the bed. She folded two shirts, underclothes, a pair of jeans, and already in his bag were the heavy socks he would wear with boots. Reuven said, ‘When did I ever want anything as a toy?’

‘Because he belongs to Josef Goldmann. Do you want him for that reason?’

‘No.’

‘He’s not of your blood or your faith.’

‘Blood isn’t important to me and I have no faith.’

She sighed, long and slowly. ‘You’re ignorant of him.’

‘I’ve seen enough of him to know him.’

‘You don’t need him. You have Mikhail.’

Reuven said, ‘I have Mikhail, who didn’t protect me. Josef has Viktor and Grigori and they didn’t protect him.’

‘Is protection so necessary now that you wish to bring a stranger to stand alongside you?’

‘Because of where we go, what we buy and to whom we sell, I need a good man in front of me, behind me and alongside me. A good man …’

‘A stranger.’

‘A proven man.’

She zipped the bag shut. It was old, battered, scraped and scuffed. He thought of the bags he had seen, from across the street, carried by the porter into the hotel when Josef Goldmann had arrived. Three of them, and they had shone with quality. His own bag had come from the market in Perm, from the stall of the man who had been his first customer, who had bought the first roof that Reuven had sold there. Two rivals had been bludgeoned for trying to take back the customer’s trade and impose their own roofs. The zip worked, the hand straps were still secure, it did not have breaks in it from which the contents could fall, and he had no need for a newer, more expensive bag. She washed his clothes by hand, and ironed them. No maid was allowed into the apartment. No luxury was permitted.

She asked, ‘Are you wise, Reuven, to trust?’

‘I can’t watch my sides and back.’

‘You have Mikhail.’

The bitterness was a quiet rasp in his voice. ‘And he did not watch my front.’

‘How long will you want him for, the stranger?’

He softened. He took her old fingers in his, ‘You trusted, once.’

She would never weep. Since those days as a child, when his father was dead in the corrective labour colony from pleurisy, his mother was going to the East, as far as it was possible to go, to look for work as a bar singer, and he had been dumped with a plastic bag of clothing in the home of his grandmother, he had not seen her cry. He could see the eyes but not beyond their glaze … One thought was perpetually shut from his mind. What would he do when she died? His grandmother, Anna, was now in her eighty-fifth year. She was so frail … He wouldn’t think of it.

He knew the story, every word.

It was 27 September. Autumn was coming quickly to the forest outside the fence, and there was a heavy damp in the air because the summer of 1943 had been poor. On that date a train came from the Minsk ghetto, and it transported more than one thousand seven hundred Jews to our camp. A few were POWs of the Red Army.

As the Russian prisoner soldiers were marched into our compound, we could see them from the barracks hut where we worked. Immediately it could be recognized that one man among them was different. He was tall, had cropped hair under his military cap, was sallow-skinned, and wore the uniform of a Soviet officer. They arrived early in the morning, and at the midday break we came out of the places where we worked and met them as they stood around, trying to focus on where they were now held. I think there were ten of them, chosen for their stature and because they were still capable of work. They stank of the cattle trucks in which they had spent four days and nights without food, water or a latrine.

That late September was a time of particular crisis for those of us who clung to life in the camp, a time when despair edged closer. Rumour ran rife. Before the transport from Minsk arrived, no trains had come to the forest sidings for three weeks. Rumour said that the camp was to close. Then we would not survive. We lived because the camp lived. If the camp died, we died. All of us who had clung to life would be put to death when the camp had no purpose. Rumour said it was ‘soon’ that the camp would close.

It achieved little, but at the camp — among the workers servicing it — there was an escape committee. A few of the men who went into the forest for woodcutting, in the last months, had broken away and run into the trees. They had been advised by the committee on where to hide the first night, where they might find partisans and where they should avoid the murderous Polish farmers and foresters; each time there was an escape attempt the rest of the work party were shot. The head of the committee was Leon Feldhendler, who was from Lublin.

I did not hear it, but others did, and each word of the first conversation between the Russian officer and Feldhendler careered as free charging whispers among the prisoners. The name of the Russian Jew, the sole officer among them, was Sasha Pechersky, a lieutenant. Pechersky was a fighting soldier, not a cook or a lorry driver. Each exchange between him and Leon Feldhendler came to us by relay of mouths … It was a day of fine rain and the cloudbanks were low over the fences and the trees, but there was darkness that day over all of the camp except on the north side where the glow of fire turned the cloud orange. The darkness was from smoke. He asked, Pechersky, what was burning, but Feldhendler told him not to ask. He asked again, in innocence, and demanded an answer. Feldhendler told him, ‘It is the burning of the bodies of those who came on the train with you.’ And, Feldhendler told Sasha Pechersky of the Road to Heaven, the sealed chambers, the engine of Gasmeister Bauer, the work parties who took the bodies from the chambers to the dug pits and the others who burned them. He explained why there was dark smoke against the cloud and the firelight. It was said by those who were closest that there were tears in Pechersky’s eyes.

A young soldier was standing a step behind the Russian officer. I thought he was my age. A smooth face, no beard or moustache, and downy hair on his cheeks. Our eyes met. Pechersky had just been told why there was smoke and fire. The young soldier looked at me and I at him … He was beautiful. Quite slight, with fine, gentle hands, a clean white skull where his hair had been shaved, but he stood tall and not like a prisoner, as tall as Pechersky. He smiled at me. In all the months I had been at the camp, no man had smiled at me. He called his name to me — Samuel. I blushed and called my name back. I couldn’t say why I let him have my name. In the compound of Camp 1, I had survived by trusting no one, man or woman, but I did it … Then guards came and an SS officer, and they were led away to start work.

The next day rumours spread of Pechersky.

The SS officer, Frenzel, took the work party into the forest to cut timber. When he brought them back to the camp, Frenzel demanded they sing, and said they could sing in Russian. Did they sing an anthem? A love song? A lament? Pechersky, the leader, told his men to sing ‘If War Comes Tomorrow’, a partisans’ song. They marched back to the camp, and Frenzel did not understand, but the Ukrainians did and didn’t tell him.

On his third day there were more rumours of Pechersky. He had been set a challenge by Frenzel to hack apart a tree stump within five minutes. He would have been whipped had he failed, but he had achieved it with half a minute to spare. He had refused Frenzel’s offer of cigarettes as reward, and refused half of a fresh-baked roll from a Ukrainian’s lunch, saying that the rations at the camp were adequate. I tell you, with honesty, there was no defiance at the camp until that man came. To refuse cigarettes and fresh bread was defiance on a scale not seen before. Everyone, by the evening, knew of it.

Each time I saw Pechersky, I saw Samuel. He walked a step behind Pechersky, always close to him. He looked for me and I looked for him. I had been long enough in the camp to have had burned from my soul any trace of emotion. I have to say it — each time I saw Samuel I felt as if sunshine fell on me. It was as if, for the first time, I nurtured a trifling hope for the future. I hardly dared to think of such a distant goal, but it had captured me.

A new rumour, like an infecting virus, ran in the camp on the fourth day after Pechersky’s arrival. It was said that on 15 October the Germans would have completed their work at the camp. We would not survive that. Before, the rumours had been vague as to the timing. Now a date was talked of. Two moods gripped us. Pechersky had created a changed atmosphere, almost one of resistance. And there was despair with the talk that we would all be forced at bayonet point down the Himmelstrasse, thrown naked into the chambers and be there, body against body, when Gasmeister Bauer started the engine.

The capos were quiet that night. They patrolled with their whips but did not use them, and did not shout.

It was the night, also, that Pechersky came to the women’s barracks and met Feldhendler. I did not, of course, know it then but it was in our barracks hut, used for better security, that Feldhendler offered Pechersky total authority over any escape attempt he might consider. They were at the far end of our hut, huddled together, and spoke softly so they could not be overheard. Samuel had come with Pechersky, and we talked a little at the window. He held my hand — he had fingers as thin as those of a musician — and he told me he came from the city of Perm and had been captured when on a reconnaissance patrol west of the Moscow suburbs. I told him I was from Wlodawa, that my father had repaired clocks and wristwatches, and that all of my family were dead.

I asked him, ‘Is it possible to hope?’

He answered, ‘You have to believe in Sasha Pechersky. If anything is possible it will be because of Sasha Pechersky. It is what he carries on his shoulders, the hopes of us all.’

‘What can he do?’

‘I don’t know.’

Hope has a small, frail flame. To make it burn, I gave it trust. I offered trust to the young man who held my hand beside the window. Then I felt weaker and cursed myself. We looked out of the window at the tops of the trees nearest to the wire. They seemed beyond reach, and between them and us there were fences and guard towers, water-filled ditches and a minefield. I remember I heard the owls call from the forest.

He edged closer to them. Tadeuz Komiski had long had the skill, practised over many years, of moving silently among the trees.

They planted pine trees.

His feet, in old boots, stepped on the mat of decayed leaves and fallen needles that had dropped from the canopy. The light was failing, the rain pattered around him, but he did not put his weight on any dead branches.

They brought pine trees that were already a metre high on three wheelbarrows. Some dug the holes, some lifted the pines and placed them with their rooting compost in the holes. Some stamped down the compost around the slender trunks and others watered the base of the trees with a rubber pipe that led to an oil drum. Some hoed the ground where the next holes would be dug. They were, Tadeuz Komiski thought, like a labour detail, but they had no guards and there were no guns, no whips … He could remember when there had been guards, SS Germans and the Ukrainians — not well but with a halting clarity, but then he had been a child.

Men and women were planting the trees and clearing the path, some his age but most were younger. They worked hard with enthusiasm, which was different from when there had been a labour detail in the forest. They had strong, cheerful voices, but there was no laughter. He went closer. They stopped, broke off from the work. Komiski, behind a tree, saw flasks opened — they ignored the rain falling on them — and sandwiches taken out of plastic boxes.

He had not eaten properly for three days at least. The scent of their food and their coffee wafted to him, and his feet moved silently forward but there were always tree trunks between him and them.

A voice hit him from behind.

‘Hello, friend. Don’t watch us eat — we’ll share with you.’

He understood German, enough of it. He recoiled, felt trapped. He was between the big group and one man, and froze, but he yearned for food. He turned. The man was young, clean-shaven, and his features blazed warmth. He was zipping up his flies and then he fastened his belt. He held toilet paper and a short-handled spade was propped against his leg.

Komiski could not speak.

‘Did I frighten you? I apologize sincerely. Come, join us — I’m Gustav.’

His arm was taken. They had taught him German at school but it was a full sixty-five years since he had heard it spoken in the forest. He was led to the group. The young man, Gustav, spoke fast to his colleagues, and a sandwich was offered him with a plastic beaker of coffee. Tadeuz Komiski wolfed it and gulped the coffee, spilling some from the side of his mouth. He thought the members of the group too polite to laugh at him, and bent to pick up a crust he had dropped. Another sandwich was given him.

He was told, ‘We’re from Kassel. We’re an anti-fascist group. Only two of us are of Jewish origin, but ethnicity isn’t important to us. We’re making a memorial of the Road to Heaven. Those of us who are Jewish had relatives who died in the camp, but the rest of us are here because this is decent work. The Road to Heaven was the path used by the SS to drive victims of the extermination programme from the rail platform to the chambers where they were asphyxiated. We’re lining the route with good pine trees we bought from the forestry authority. We won’t finish this year, probably next.’

An apple was given him and the beaker was filled again. The coffee scalded his mouth. He held tight to the apple.

‘And we’ll put stones under the trees on which will be carved the names of some who went this route to die. We believe that the trees we put here and the stones will last for many years. Then this place and what was done here won’t be forgotten. We consider it would be a crime if the memory of the camp’s evil was lost.’

He took a bite from the apple.

‘I think, friend, you’re quite old. Excuse me, because I don’t wish to intrude, but you would have been a boy when the camp existed. I wonder, were you here when there was the break-out? Did you live in the forest with your parents? Do you remember when the camp revolted?’

Hands held out more sandwiches wrapped in cellophane, and a slice of fruit cake. His stomach growled. Tadeuz Komiski heard the sirens, rifle shots, and the rattle of machine-guns, which was clearest because they had been fired from the elevated watchtowers.

‘Do you remember … remember … remember? Were you here … here … here?’

Remember? It was never out of his mind. Tadeuz Komiski was always in this place, among these trees. He dropped the beaker and the remnants of the coffee slopped on his trouser leg. He threw away the half-eaten apple, turned his back on the sandwiches and cake, and ran.

‘Well, I suppose the best that can be said of it is that bloody Lawson didn’t show up. Anyway, here’s what’s come through.’

In a basement of the embassy building, Deadeye was passed two packages by the station chief. Big and bulky, wrapped in the thick brown paper used to send heavy parcels through the post for kids’ birthdays. But the packages weren’t presents, the courts had ordered that Deadeye had no contact with the children of his three failed marriages, and they hadn’t come through the post but by diplomatic courier.

The station chief said, ‘Don’t think of opening them here. I saw the inventory and didn’t want to know that much. Another of Lawson’s hare-brained games? Count me out. Just give me a signature.’

On the paper offered him — and it referred to the delivery and collection of ‘unspecified items’ — Deadeye scrawled an unrecognizable name. He picked up the packages, one under each arm. Under his right elbow, beneath the paper, was a canvas bag that held a Heckler & Koch machine pistol; under his left elbow, and beneath that wrapping, was a holdall with stun and smoke grenades, a Glock 9mm pistol, sufficient ammunition for the two weapons to fill five magazines, and a field medical kit.

‘So that there are no misunderstandings — and please pass this to the esteemed Mr Lawson — should any of these “unspecified items” be used inside the borders of the new greater Germany then he, you and whatever ragtag army he has in tow will be pegged out to dry. Still living in the Good Old Days, is he? From me, please quote verbatim, the time when we could run round like an occupying power is gone. No offence, and nothing personal, but just fuck off out of here soonest.’

He was shown the door. Deadeye was led up a staircase, taken through the lobby, damn near slung out of the embassy entrance. ‘Wanker,’ he murmured. Rain dripped on to the paper wrapping. He walked down Wilhelmstrasse, past the German police guards — more wankers — and threaded through the chicane of concrete blocks in place there to prevent a suicide bomber in a vehicle achieving martyrdom. He used few words, wouldn’t have wasted them on the station chief. Truth was, he rather liked Mr Lawson. That he did not walk easily, down Wilhelmstrasse, in the late afternoon when the pavements were crowded with the spill-out of ministry workers, had nothing to do with the weight he carried under each arm. In the bathroom, before breakfast, he had checked his testicles and the bruising was still there. After three days there were still technicolour shades round them, but Deadeye hadn’t complained, was never a moan-merchant. In fact, he was pretty damn pleased that Mr Lawson still called him up.

His name, Deadeye, had been with him for twenty-six years: once he had been a young marine, cosy in the sanger on top of Londonderry’s walls with his rifle and its mounted telescopic sight. The Provo guy had been eleven hundred yards away and had taken the M-1 carbine out of the boot of the car and been sniped. His company major had called it the ‘finest exhibition of marksmanship I ever heard of’, and his colonel had congratulated him on ‘bloody fine shooting, real Deadeye Dick stuff’. It had stuck. He was Deadeye in the Special Boat Squadron when he was married to Leanne, Deadeye as an instructor at the Commando Training Centre, Lympstone, when he was married to Mavis, Deadeye in the first Iraq war as an increment with SIS, holed up with a big bloody radio and his rifle in a Kuwait City apartment block, when he was married to Adele … He was still Deadeye, but wasn’t married to anyone.

He turned off Wilhelmstrasse and, in the far distance, saw the minibus. The rain had come on harder, but he reckoned the paper wrapping would hold till he reached shelter.

That he worked at all, that his loneliness in a one-bedroomed flat on the outskirts of Plymouth was ever broken, was due to Christopher Lawson. No one else called him. The bloody wives didn’t, or the kids. He didn’t do reunions, men getting pissed and polishing reputations. He had no friends. To kill the time he put together expensive models of men o’ war from Nelson’s time, with intricate rigging, and waited for the phone to ring. That loneliness, with the model kit for company and the phone not ringing, hurt deep.

He reached the minibus, dragged open the door, climbed in. They were all there, squashed in, except Dennis. Lawson was in the front, had the passenger seat, and Adrian was at the wheel. Their breath had misted the windows. Deadeye squeezed between Bugsy and Shrinks, then chucked the packages in their wet wrapping over his shoulders on to the laps of Davies and the girl. He didn’t give a toss for his grunt and her squeal. Lawson looked at him, quizzed with a raised eyebrow, and Deadeye nodded.

‘How was my colleague?’

Deadeye said, ‘He badmouthed you, Mr Lawson.’

‘Predictable … He won’t for much longer, if I’m right. Yes, time for a bigger picture.’

Deadeye thought Mr Lawson always did the big picture well, and he settled back in his seat to listen. Well, it would help to see the big picture, help good.

‘I told you, back in London, that my supposition was of a warhead being brought from Russian territory — to be precise, as I was then, from the former closed city of Arzamas-16 — for delivery and sale to a Russian ethnic criminal organization. I believe, after that sale, a second deal will be struck with a purchaser who will attempt to detonate that warhead in a city in western Europe, probably in the UK, or in the United States of America. The aim of Operation Haystack is to disrupt such a deal and to destroy such a sale. To that end I am endeavouring to insert our man, November, as far as I can into the bowels of that criminal organization. We have made progress.’

Lawson paused. He seldom rushed on explanations when they had to be given. He believed a stuttering drip-feed of information better held the attention of an audience. By stopping in his monologue, he had the chance to look around him, to study the faces and see where support rested, where antagonism built.

‘Take the story of Oliver Twist. Forget about Oliver, but recall the character of Sykes. Sykes had a dog, a much whipped mongrel that harboured no malice and followed its vile master. After Sykes had, most brutally, murdered a pretty girl, he fled. There was a hue and cry. Diligent citizens pursued Sykes, anxious to apprehend him, see him tried, condemned and hanged — but they lost him. Sykes would have escaped but for the loyalty of the mongrel, which refused to be abandoned. The dog trailed him, found him. He could not throw it off. Allusions to this may be flawed but the conclusion is justified. The pursuers followed the dog. The dog handed them their man. We have a dog and we call him November. Understood?’

No questions, but Bugsy passed round a little box of breath-freshener pills. He looked into the faces of the girl and young Davies, saw outrage and enjoyed it.

‘At every opportunity presented me, I have endeavoured to push our man, November, further from dependence on us. I have no interest in him believing that we hold his salvation in our hands. We are achieving this aim. We saw it today, November supported by Reuven Weissberg. Links are in place. Reuven Weissberg, and our mongrel has led us to him, is a considerable player in the ranks of organized crime, well capable of purchasing and selling on a device from Arzamas-16. He is—’

Shrill, a voice from the back: ‘I don’t think I’m hearing this … Are you just using Johnny Carrick — yes, he does have a bloody name, is not simply a codeword and a file number — like he’s a half-dead fish hooked on to a treble and lobbed into a lake to catch a damn pike? He’s owed more, a bloody sight more, than you’re offering.’

‘Charmingly put, my dear. As I was saying, our man is embedded in the world of Reuven Weissberg. If I’m correct, Reuven Weissberg will travel in the next few hours to the East and will have a prearranged rendezvous to take delivery of the device, the warhead, whatever. Our man has to lead us, show us where to be. Then we deal with the matter. Questions?’

He saw that the girl shivered. Saw also that young Davies had slipped an arm loosely round her shoulder, doing the comforter role. He thought questions, accusations, were blurring the girl’s mind and her lips moved, but she didn’t cough out her hatred of him.

Bugsy spoke. ‘I’m not one to cringe. Don’t get me wrong, Guv’nor. I’m up for this like we all are. How safe is this thing likely to be? I think it’s only fair we should know.’

‘Drop it on your foot, Bugsy, and there will not be a mushroom cloud but you will have a broken toe. In the heart of this weapon — the pit — if it’s to be sold on, there will be plutonium or highly enriched uranium. Pack round that pit several kilos of commercial or military explosive, along with a detonator and a wire to a button switch or a remote, and you will have what we laughingly call a “dirty bomb”. A dirty bomb, when triggered, will contaminate a city centre to the extent that it has to be abandoned. It is a dirty bomb that Reuven Weissberg will take delivery of and sell on, and Josef Goldmann is in place to make payment for it, then accept payment on sale. I hope, with your help — and November’s — to stop him. Questions?’

He sensed it had welled up, but was controlled. Young Davies asked. ‘Did you consider sharing your suspicions?’

‘With whom?’

‘Well, for a start, we’re in Germany — sharing with the BfV. Allies, aren’t they?’

‘Unreliable, burdened with bureaucracy. Next question.’

‘If the device is coming from Russia, and the Cold War’s over, why not share with them?’

‘For a decade the Russians have rebuffed insinuations that their nuclear arsenals are porous. It is not accepted that a weapon could be missing — it would be regarded as “provocation” to suggest it. The Cold War’s over, is it?’

‘So, just us and the agent stand between peace for the great unwashed and Armageddon. Too damn proud to share … Down to us and him?’

‘About right,’ Lawson said.

‘That’s ridiculous.’

‘It’s the way it will be.’

‘And should we fail on the interception, should we lose it, or inconveniently lose them, what happens? Do I hear you say, Mr Lawson, “Let’s go for a beer”? Do we stand at the bar, wait for the big bang and—’

‘I think we’re aware of your opinion and the prejudice it carries.’

‘You’ll be damned, Mr Lawson — oh, did Clipper Reade not share? — if you fail.’

‘I do not intend to fail.’ He was hurt. Wouldn’t have shown it. The sneering reference to Clipper had wounded. Couldn’t have explained his reverence and respect for the big Texan. The best damn years of his life had been with Clipper, and Lawson could well recall his desolation when the American had left Berlin and taken the flight down the corridor out of Tempelhof. He had known that Clipper, in a week, would be en route to the States and retirement. He had written once, now twenty-seven years ago, to the Agency’s personnel department, just a chatty note in his own handwriting, and it had been returned in a clean envelope with a slip inside stating Addressee instructed no forwarded mail. Had only the memories, the wisecracks and the wisdom to hold on to. He had shredded that chatty note, never written again, and had never asked Agency people what had happened to his mentor, but had kept the past alive … And a little wet-behind-the-ears bastard had sneered at that name. ‘And with your help and co-operation I shall not fail.’

The silence hung inside the minibus, as if it was a burden.

He was anonymous, a stranger in the city. The Crow had not visited Damascus before. He was in a lodging-house, two streets back from the north end of Semiramis Square. He had bought food from a street stall and taken it back to his room.

He lay on the bed. An electric fan on the table ruffled his hair but its constant whine was insufficient to distract him. He reflected. Of course, the Crow felt no resentment at what he believed his future held. Alone in the aircraft that had brought him to Syria, and on the pavements of its capital city, he had considered his position, and the future. Some, faced with such a situation, cut off thoughts of those they had loved, found a new woman and a new life. He would not. He couldn’t imagine being in the bed of another woman or holding other children in his arms. They knew nothing of what he did, what he planned. Those he had left behind were in complete ignorance of who he was. They would learn.

It would happen. It was inevitable. In the hour before dawn, in a week, a month or a year, the front door of his home would be bludgeoned open and men of the Interior Ministry’s investigation unity, the mabaheth, would pour into the villa, with Americans of the Agency trailing behind them. While rooms were ripped apart, his wife and children would cower in a corner and questions would be screamed at them. It would happen. However close the security around an operation, traces were always left. So many of the leaders’ names were known once the work of an operation was completed. The very attack opened the road for the investigators to follow. Now the Crow was unknown, but in the hours after an explosion and as computers pored over the minutiae of travel arrangements, his name and picture would materialize. He would be running, would be in hiding until the day he made a mistake or was betrayed … The love of his wife and children would be stretched to breaking-point as investigators rifled through their home.

He would have inflicted that pain on them. He couldn’t apologize. He couldn’t ask their forgiveness. He was a soldier, committed to war, and he believed he had the chance to attack and wound his enemy.

‘Please, don’t do that,’ Sak said, emphasized it.

‘What’s the problem?’ His mother stood in the kitchen doorway, hands on her hips, her head shaking in confusion.

‘There is no problem.’

‘I said, reasonably enough, if we need to reach you while you’re away we’ll get your accommodation address from the school.’

‘Don’t.’

‘Why the mystery? You’re on school business. They’ll know where you are.’

‘You shouldn’t call the school. They wouldn’t like it.’

His father, more confused than his mother, intervened from the sofa. ‘But you said yourself that your mobile won’t be on.’

‘Don’t call the school.’ He flounced out, crossed the hall, stamped up the stairs, slammed the door of his room.

Sak fell on his bed.

He imagined them. His father would again be slumped in front of the television and his mother would be doing her final tidy of the kitchen before coming upstairs for the night, and he had perplexed them both. It had been an aside from his mother: ‘You said you didn’t know your hotel when you’re away. Should we need to contact you, I don’t know why, but — well, the school secretary will tell us … because you say your mobile won’t be switched on.’ All innocence. His mother, almost, had caught him in the lie of his doing reconnaissance for a school trip later in the year. He was a poor conspirator, recognized it.

He wouldn’t have dared now to back out of the conspiracy.

There had been a moment when he had stood in front of a metal-faced gate to the garden of a villa on the outskirts of Quetta when he might have. But he had sucked in a big breath and pressed the bell. Inside, under a walnut tree, sitting on the dried earth, welcomed, propositioned, he couldn’t have backed out — hadn’t wished to, and had felt himself, at last, to be important. Couldn’t have backed out when the car had pulled up beside him as he walked away from the school gate, and he was told what he should do, and when — not in the form of a request but as an instruction. He had been told to take holiday from work, to find an excuse for his absence from his family, and he had been ordered to leave his mobile phone behind, because, when switched on, a mobile phone left a footprint.

He lay on his bed, with his packed bag close to the door. A life of failure swam past him. Sak had no idea of the enormity of the conspiracy he had joined, or of the many who were part of it.

‘I tell you, Yashkin—’

‘What?’

‘You always fucking interrupt … I tell you I feel better.’

‘A pity we have no wine to celebrate.’

They were long past Pogar and had gone through Starodub, a miserable little place, Molenkov had thought, and were now on the main route, the M13. Not from choice, but there was no side road on which Molenkov could navigate them to Klincy, where they would sleep. He sensed that his friend’s sour mood came from his directions that they must use the highway. Every car sped past them, and every van, every motorcycle, every lorry hooted in a cacophony because the plodding Polonez was an obstacle. Drivers held up behind them hit their horns and flashed headlights, and when they came level they pointed to the hard shoulder, as if that was where a slow old car should be.

‘Are you sulking because I’ve omitted to ask why you feel better?’

Molenkov smiled. ‘You could ask humbly and I could reply graciously with an explanation.’

‘Fuck you. Why do you feel better?’

‘At last I feel luck is with us. Do you understand me? In thirty-five minutes, my estimation, we’ll be in Klincy and—’

‘I know nothing of Klincy, its history, industry or layout. Where we will sleep, I don’t know.’

‘Can you not interrupt me, Yashkin? Then we’ll be at the end of the fifth day, and will have achieved three-quarters — almost — of our journey. We’ve survived, haven’t fought each other, have kept the wreck on the road. With each kilometre we travel we’re each nearer to a half-share of one million American dollars. Those are achievements, and they tell me that luck is with us.’

‘You believe in luck, my friend?’

‘I do. What was it but luck that caused the sentry at the main gate not to search the cart and find the thing? More luck for you that I, the political officer, didn’t see you dig the hole and bury it, because I would have reported you. More luck that Viktor came and you, my friend, confided in me. I believe in luck.’

‘We’ll need luck for two more days.’

Molenkov, now sombre, said, ‘I think you have to earn it.’

They were dwarfed by lorries, most with swaying trailers, that streamed past them. The passenger in the cab of a lorry that hauled timber had his window wound down and hurled abuse at Yashkin, who gave him the finger. Molenkov turned in his seat, cursed the stiffness of his pelvis and reached back. He let his fingers fall on the rough canvas that covered the thing. He thought of his wife, dead, and his son, dead, and wondered with growing bitterness why they had not earned luck. A horn screamed at him.

The voice chirped in his ear. ‘You want to know about luck, Molenkov?’

He turned his head, saw bright mischief in Yashkin’s eyes.

‘A story about luck?’

‘Go on.’

‘Have you heard of the luck of the scientists at Arzamas-16 who did the first test?’

‘No.’

Yashkin said, ‘It was the twenty-ninth of August, 1949, the test was to be called Operation First Lightning, and the bomb was on a tower in what has become the Semipalatinsk test site. Lavrenti Beria, head of security for all of the Soviet Union, was overseeing the programme to build the bomb and he came to view the test. The device was fired. It worked. The bomb was the triumph of Igor Kurchatov. Beria then read, with the mushroom cloud in the sky, a letter of congratulation from Stalin, addressed to all the scientists who had made the firing successful. Kurchatov was lucky. He spoke afterwards to close colleagues of his luck and theirs. He said Beria had carried two documents from Stalin: the letter of congratulation and the warrant for the scientists’ execution. Had they not been lucky, had the device not exploded, they would have been killed — Kurchatov said so. One document in the right pocket of Beria’s jacket, and one in the left. You could say that Kurchatov earned his luck … There were nomads who lived in transient villages inside the zone of radioactive fall-out and they were not lucky. They were not moved before the test. As always, luck must be earned. You look miserable, Molenkov. I tell you, we’ll earn our luck, and take what’s owed us.’

They came off the M13 and drove into Klincy.

Lawson came to the car, panting. Davies followed, carrying the bags for both of them. The car was parked on the kerb behind the minibus, a hundred and fifty metres up the street from the hotel.

The girl pushed open the rear door for him, and said, ‘Goldmann’s wheels are at the front. All of that party is loaded up, their gear in the boot. They’re moving out. We’re ready to go.’

Lawson slipped into the rear seat and closed the door abruptly. Wasn’t going to tolerate young Davies beside him. He had exchanged only banalities with him since the spat in the minibus. Not that he wanted more. He preferred quiet. Not ten minutes ago, he had been in his room. Throwing his clothes into his bag, he had seen the biro he had used beside the notepad on the bedside table, had bent to pick it up, and his hand had brushed the telephone. He had not called Lavinia since he had left London. He had not told her where he was headed. He could have lifted the phone, punched the numbers, muttered a couple of platitudes to the answerphone, or even spoken to her.

‘Are we all fit?’

‘Never been fitter.’ There was still that bloody sneer in young Davies’s voice.

‘Ready to go,’ the girl said.

Lawson remembered the telephone he hadn’t lifted, the number he hadn’t dialled, and a slow frown formed on his forehead. He had been away from home for two nights, and he couldn’t have said with certainty that Lavinia would have noticed his absence.

‘A little change of plan,’ Lawson said. Like a bloody bright light that had come on — God, his mind was clouded, confused, and he’d not acted on an impulse. Should have done. They were staring at him from the front. ‘Slipping, sorry. Luke … Apologies to both.’

He said what he wanted done.

He climbed out of the car, took his bag from the boot and started to walk to the minibus. Wasn’t damn well losing it, was he? They’d be standing in a bloody great queue winding round the corridors of VBX for a chance to take a peek at him if word surfaced that Christopher Lawson had lost the plot. He reached the minibus, pulled open the side door. ‘Coming with you, gentlemen, wherever we’re headed. They’ll be following tomorrow.’

Mikhail was at the wheel of the car that had stopped behind theirs. Reuven had come to the front passenger door of their car and opened it. Clear enough what was intended.

Josef Goldmann was out, quick as a rat up a drain. Reuven was talking fast, but quietly. Josef Goldmann gaped. Reuven’s finger pointed to Carrick, who knew nothing. Showed no interest because that wouldn’t have been expected of him. He thought Goldmann tried to argue, that he was brushed aside. Carrick saw his shoulders slump.

Goldmann came to Carrick’s door. Beside Carrick was Viktor, who would have heard and understood but was impassive and stared straight ahead. Carrick opened his door.

‘He wants you to go with him.’

‘Sorry, sir?’

‘Reuven wishes you to travel, Johnny, in his car.’

Carrick said, ‘You are my employer, Mr Goldmann. I ride where you want me to ride.’

Carrick saw defeat cut Goldmann’s face. ‘Thank you, Johnny. I wish you to ride in his car.’

‘As long as you’re happy, Mr Goldmann.’

‘I am happy, Johnny.’

He went, sat in the Audi. Mikhail’s smile was as cold as bloody winter. Wondered then if, in fact, he had failed the test as the drill tip had neared his kneecap, wondered if he was dead. Recalled the support given him by Reuven Weissberg when they had walked from the warehouse. Knew nothing. Reuven Weissberg passed him a peppermint. Knew less than nothing.

Mikhail drove fast into the Berlin night, and headed east.