Timebomb

Chapter 12

They came into Warsaw at dawn. The horizon ahead, to the east, had no brightness, only degrees of grey. It was a landscape of greyness. Merging the land and the sky, a carpet of smog hung in the air. Carrick had not been told why he had been scalped from Josef Goldmann’s car to Reuven Weissberg’s.

He had not been questioned during the six hours on the road. Mikhail said nothing to him, spoke only — occasionally — to Reuven in Russian. Carrick found the silence unsettling. The radio was on softly, but only to catch road reports. The long quiet times were difficult for Carrick because the motion of the car and the warmth of its interior lulled him. He had decided he had been taken from his paymaster, Josef Goldmann, his Bossman, as a gesture of supremacy. Simple stuff. Someone else had something that was wanted, desirable and valued, and it was the mark of Reuven Weissberg that an alpha dog could take what it chose to.

Well past Poznan, with the signs showing for Warsaw, he had decided his assessment was flawed.

When he was stalking Jed and Baz, or Wayne, he had seen the greed that ruled them, the need for the pecking order to be displayed and worn, as uniformed officers hankered after their rank badges. Greed was the biggest factor in criminals’ lives. Either side of Poznan and in the quiet of the car, he had been applying ill-founded stereotypes, had stuck labels on his image of Reuven Weissberg, which had drifted away as the kilometres were swallowed. More to this man … No sign of a mistress, but the grandmother who displayed authority over him was there. No indication of affluence in the apartment, just heavy old furniture that would have filled up the back of a junk store in London or Bristol. No top-of-the-range car, and the big Audi that Mikhail drove had gone past a hundred thousand kilometres on the clock. The clothes weren’t Armani and the hair wasn’t styled. Would have walked past him on the street and not noticed him.

Wrong. Carrick would have noticed him, had he looked into Reuven Weissberg’s eyes.

Coming into the suburbs of Warsaw, Carrick’s thoughts took new turns. Behind him, Weissberg had discarded the big leather jacket with the scuffed elbows and frayed cuffs and it lay on the spare seat beside him. He wore a clean, ironed shirt with short sleeves. The leather jacket had been shrugged off outside the Berlin hotel when it had been demanded that Carrick walk away from Josef Goldmann. Then Carrick had held open the car door, and as Reuven Weissberg had dropped into the seat, the right sleeve had worked up. Again, Carrick had seen the closed hole where a bullet had punctured the flesh.

Now, as Mikhail took the car up on to a main route flyover, Carrick believed he understood. When they had tested him, pushed him to the limit, and he had exploded with the yell of accusation about a gunshot and lack of protection, then — like a thunderclap — a mood had changed.

About protection … about the boasts of Josef Goldmann that he was protected by a guy who would risk his own life to earn his corn, about protection in a world of acute and extreme danger. It had been almost enough to make Carrick laugh out loud. But he did not … He could have laughed because a criminal feared for his own safety and had taken possession of his associate’s bodyguard, as if that bodyguard was a flak jacket, proven against small-arms fire … All about protection. As a child, Carrick had been taken by his grandfather into the Cairngorm mountains to the south of the Spey’s mouth when autumn turned the high slopes golden. They had gone, then, to lofty viewpoints, with binoculars and a telescope on a tripod, and his grandfather had searched the range for stags and hinds. The season of the rut, when the king stag mated with his hinds, fascinated his grandfather and bored the child Carrick near to death — unless there was combat.

Younger stags approached the king, and there was the bellowed defiance of the big old boy who controlled the herd. Some pretenders plucked courage and came to fight — horns locked, wounds made, blood seeping. Rare, but he had seen it, a pretender usurped the big old boy, sent him from the field where the hinds grazed. At the sight of the one-time king creeping away, injured and desolate, his grandfather always let rip squeals of excitement and thought his grandchild should ape him.

They said, on the courses he had done and in the office when time was idled, that the fear of every major criminal — at level three, into organized crime with international links — was that a young gun would topple him. They did not, of course, retire and slip away to the villa with the pool and the patio, milk the building-society account and allow an old world to drift away. They tried to stay the course and hang on to power, authority. They ended up, damn near the lot of them, in handcuffs because of the one ‘final’ big-shot deal, or dead in the gutter from a contract man’s weapon, with blood coming off the pavement and heading for the drain. Carrick remembered the strength of Reuven Weissberg’s grip on his sleeve and the way he had been held up when they had left the warehouse.

The car swung off the flyover and came down a slip road, then swerved across traffic lanes. They came to a hotel whose floors reached, almost, to the cloud base. Porters hurried forward but Mikhail waved them away. He did his own parking and they carried their own bags inside. Only Mikhail went to the desk to check in and collect the key cards. Carrick noted it. He did not have to give a signature. Neither did Reuven Weissberg, nor Mikhail. They waited a few minutes, not many, then Viktor came with Josef Goldmann.

Funny thing, but Johnny Carrick had never thought of Josef Goldmann — in the months he had been with him — as anything other than a target, and he sensed that Goldmann was small fry and insignificant in comparison with Weissberg. And he had never thought of Reuven Weissberg — in the two days since he had met him — as a true target.

He was told he should rest because it was the last day and the last night that there would be time to sleep. Difficult, standing in front of a lift, then entering it, feeling its surge up through forty-something floors, to remember that he was an undercover with SCD10, but on secondment, and that a matter of national security involved him … Too damn difficult to comprehend.

He stood at the plate-glass window as the rain ran on it and stared out. He said quietly, ‘I wonder if, at the end of it, they’ll have the balls?’

Viktor shrugged. ‘It was their proposition. If they hadn’t talked of it, how would I have known of it?’

Reuven grimaced. ‘We have to believe they’ll be there.’

‘They made the approach.’

‘Old men, both. Each kilometre takes them further from what they know.’

Viktor now smacked his fist into the palm of his hand. ‘Me, I take responsibility.’

‘You believe in them.’

‘Yes.’

His room faced the Palace of Culture, the Stalin monument to domination, and his window was level with an aspect of its upper structure. For a moment, Reuven Weissberg’s tongue wiped his lower lip, darting and hasty. ‘Should we have agreed it?’

He saw puzzlement scud over Viktor’s features. ‘You can’t hesitate now. I say that with respect, but you cannot. The deal is done. Not only us, and the old men. Others, too, are travelling. It’s not possible to withdraw.’

Turning, the smile at his mouth and the brightness in his eyes, Reuven Weissberg said, ‘If you say that the old men have the balls and will reach the place you agreed with them, I’ll be there. And I’ll honour the sale onwards. Do you understand the past?’

‘Yes,’ Viktor said.

‘What was done in the past, you understand that?’

‘Yes.’

‘Because of the past, I buy and sell … Will we hear from the old men again?’

‘We heard that they’d started out, and that’s enough. There’s something I wish to ask of you.’

Weissberg listened. He recalled what his grandmother had said, and heard the boasts of Josef Goldmann on the pedigree of a bodyguard. Reuven Weissberg accepted the advice offered him. Then he caught Viktor’s arm, held it vice-tight and whispered that it would be the last time Johnny Carrick was tested.

She recognized quality, and she thought the guy was good. First up, he didn’t mess with the puerile codenames, so she was no longer C for Charlie, and he was no longer D for Delta. All explained for her with a grin, and it had made her chuckle. G was not for Golf, the call sign, but was for the sour old fool’s insistence on the ‘Good Old Days’, and D was for Disciple: the poor creature trailing around after the lunatic.

They were at the door. He rang the bell.

Dinner was at the café on Hardenbergerstrasse, and Luke Davies had imitated Lawson ordering dinner the previous evening, not showing the menu but insisting he do it himself, speaking German with the English accent that destroyed it, and selecting the wine as if he alone knew his way round the list. She’d sat where Lawson had. Same chair that the man had used perhaps twenty or thirty years before. Luke Davies, she thought, had been good company, and fun, and she was short enough of that.

He pressed the bell three times, long rings.

He had taken her back to the little pension in the side-street, had booked himself again into the room he’d vacated in the evening, and her into what had been Lawson’s room. He’d ordered the nightcap in the bar downstairs, and talked of his work — not the classified stuff — and she’d warmed and told him about what little amusement came out of the Pimlico office. She’d sensed it was an age, if ever, since he’d talked of his work with an outsider to VBX: she’d known it was the first time she’d spoken as an insider of SCD10 to someone outside the loop. They’d gone up the stairs and paused by their doors. He’d smiled at her and she at him, he’d wished her a good night’s sleep and they’d parted. Maybe it was because of the wish, but she’d slept well, right through till he’d banged on her door … What they hadn’t talked about, because there’d have been no fun and no laughter, was N for November. Truth to tell, once he’d been called to the Audi and away from Target One, and Lawson had changed his bloody mind, given new instructions, she hadn’t thought of Johnny Carrick, which might have been selling him short.

A sharp, reedy voice answered the bell, distorted by the connection to the grilled speaker.

Katie had confirmation of the quality of Luke Davies. Damn good German, and what she thought was bloody good Russian. Not rushing an old woman high in the building above them.

She knew what he’d said because he had rehearsed it with her.

He was a student, Jewish. She was a student, not Jewish. He was involved in Holocaust studies and she was working on contemporary Russian history. Frau Weissberg had been recommended as a prime source for the era covered by the Second World War. How did they know the address? Because they had been given it by Esther Goldmann, wife of Josef. Had Josef Goldmann, who, his wife had said, was in Berlin, not told her of their visit? Esther Goldmann had said Frau Weissberg had a history of suffering, heroic courage. Students would be privileged to hear her speak of the past. A whistle of breath, then the click of the outer door unlocking.

When he had rehearsed it with her, Katie had said, ‘How do you know she’s affected by the Holocaust?’

‘In a forest, in fatigues, holding a baby. Photograph in the kitchen. Partisans in the forest. That’s “affected” … Next?’

‘What about “suffering” and “heroic courage”, are they guaranteed?’

‘In the forest with a baby, with partisans, her hair white at twenty, twenty-one. They fit.’

‘She calls Josef Goldmann, wherever he is, on a mobile. Checks you.’

‘Doesn’t. Knows mobiles are tracked. Basic security, mobile off.’

Katie had said, ‘So, she calls Esther Goldmann for verification.’

‘Then we blow out, but she won’t have done. I’d bet on it.’

She’d pulled a face. ‘On your head be it.’

He’d blinked. ‘Wrong. On Carrick’s head.’

And the lift rose smoothly and fast.

He said, ‘Don’t forget the old bathroom routine, and getting her to show you. Lead, and look harmless.’

She was undercover-trained. Had done the same courses as Johnny Carrick and heard the same lectures. Her major experience was as a girl trying to break into the gang doing a street opposite King’s Cross station, and having to leg it each time the pimps, Ukrainian and Albanian, came after her. She brought them out and was the bait for them to break cover. The camera in the parked van did the identification, and she’d played the part of the girlfriend on three different operations. She knew what she had to do, but seemed not to mind being told.

It was always bullshit.

Bullshit opened doors.

Katie could do that smile, the one about melting butter, and do it well, and Luke Davies was good. She didn’t know what he said in the shadowed gloom of the hall, as they were taken through to the kitchen. She was doing smiles and he was doing sincerity, and it was bluff and it was bullshit. A pot of tea was made, and poured before it had stood. It was thin and tasted stewed. Katie kept smiling, and Luke was nodding, as if what he was being told was a message from God. The old woman, Anna Weissberg, made short, staccato statements that were, Katie thought, bare of redundant explanation. Maybe it was five minutes before the tea was poured, and maybe five more before the mugs had been pushed towards them.

Katie understood. She saw the increasing agitation of the grandmother of Reuven Weissberg. Too right, my old girl, because it was a piss-poor decision to let in soft-talkers off the street, with an introduction that couldn’t be checked. Fidgeting and fretting, answers drifting to brevity, then to one word. She was at the door, and holding it open for them. Katie did her stuff. The toilet, please. Could she use the toilet? Always worked … and couldn’t find the switch for the light, and was shown it. She stood inside the toilet, heard the slippered feet shuffle away — wondered if Anna Weissberg had any clothes other than black or whether she mourned perpetually — counted to fifty, pulled the flush and came back into the hall.

In English, Luke said to her, ‘I am afraid that Esther Goldmann was presumptuous in offering us this introduction. Anna Weissberg was in a camp, was freed from it and lived in the forests with partisans. Her grandson’s father was born in the forests. It was a time of great strain that she doesn’t feel happy talking about. It would have been better if we’d waited till her grandson was at home. That’s what she’s saying.’

‘Please would you thank Mrs Weissberg for her kindness, Luke, and for the tea and for letting us into her home, and say we hope we haven’t disturbed her and woken bad memories. For that, if we did, we apologize.’

It was translated.

The welcome had been outstayed. Katie recognized the discomfort they had visited on the woman. The brilliant bullshit had wormed them in but couldn’t keep them there. She sensed a loneliness into which they had intruded, and an isolation that had been fractured, and thought the woman would regret, damn deep, permitting them to enter.

The door closed behind them. They heard a key turn in the lock and a bolt go across, but they had broken into a fortress and lies had done the Trojan Horse for them.

‘What did we learn?’

‘I’m not sure,’ Luke Davies answered. ‘Don’t know. I mean, we’ve accessed a big player’s home, but inside it’s what I imagine a functionary’s apartment would be in fifty Russian cities. There’s nothing. No wealth, no opulence, extravagance. So, what’s the motive for criminality, doing the big deal that Lawson blathers about? I suppose she’s central, but I don’t know why. All I can say is that she had white hair when she was in that forest, and she would have been about twenty.’

‘Could a scarring emotional experience turn your hair white?’

‘I suppose so, but I don’t know.’

‘And that’s it?’

‘That’s it. We go and find them.’

Katie nodded. She did the mobile call, reached Lawson. Did he want a run-down? He did not. She didn’t bother to express her opinion that Luke Davies had been bloody double-time brilliant in gaining entry, and that she had achieved the hoary old one of needing the toilet and had won him half a minute alone in the kitchen. She didn’t think Lawson would have jumped for joy. They should drive to Warsaw.

She took the wheel, and he did the maps.

The sign said it was still two kilometres to the Customs point.

Right to the last, before accepting the inevitable and joining the crawl of the queue, they had debated whether a diversion north or south, and an attempt to use side-roads, was worthwhile. Had decided, with grim reluctance, that the M13 was the only possible route. Molenkov’s finger traced the frontier line on the map across his knees, and he’d bent low over the unfolded sheets to see the detail better. He had muttered of an absence of roads, too many rivers that would not have bridges and would be so swollen as to make ridiculous the thought of fording them, forests that were great blocks on the map.

Earlier there were two, three opportunities when they might have turned off the M13 and gone south, towards Klimovo, or to the north and on a side road to Svatsk, or tried for a larger loop and gone far north and west to Krasnaja Gora, but Molenkov had pulled a long, mock-despairing face when they had come close to the signs and Yashkin had driven on. They had reached the queues. At first they had progressed in little darted movements. Then it had been a crawl but continuous. Now they were halted.

Molenkov’s cough was hacking. Yashkin checked the windows. They were, of course, closed tight against the rain but something of the foulness around the Polonez seeped in. The lorries belched fumes from their exhausts. Yashkin thought they were surrounded by a fog of polluting gases. The taste was in his mouth and dried his throat, seeming to scratch rather than tickle it.

Did the Belarus authorities have modern detection equipment to scan the vehicles crossing to their territory? Did they have the devices that would read radiation traces? He had not thought so, and Molenkov had not known. Because of rivers and forests it was decided, after the debate, that the chance must be taken: fucking Belarus, with an economy still back in medieval or at best Tsarist times, would not have the equipment to recognize the signature of a plutonium pit in the heart of a Zhukov weapon.

Another anxiety, now more pressing, intruded on the mind of Yashkin. It would not have reared itself if they had driven fast and directly to the twin Customs points. What he would have called, all those years before when he had worked, the ‘human factor’. The pompous official, the man who revelled in the power given him, the arsehole consumed by self-esteem, the bastard who sauntered to a vehicle, peered through its windows, examined passports and driving licence, then demanded a search of the interior. That worry had been a pimple head, a mosquito’s bite, but the irritation was now scratched and had become an open sore.

He drove the car forward, braked again, saw tail-lights in the queues ahead, watched the drift of the fumes across the windscreen. He told Molenkov that the anxiety for the equipment should have been secondary to the worry over the human factor of an official demanding to search the Polonez.

‘I mean, it’s hardly hidden, only covered. Well, tell me — you’d know, my friend, because you could act the part of a zampolit and be pompous, an arsehole and arrogant. You were the small bureaucrat official with no status beyond that given you by the uniform.’

His friend was grinning. Between the violence of the coughing, Molenkov gave a black chuckle. ‘Can’t you see yourself, Yashkin? Weren’t you such an official?’

Hands raised, Yashkin accepted his point. ‘What do we do?’

A little frown from Molenkov, an index finger tapping his chin as he thought. The pursing of lips because a decision was reached. ‘It’s the uniform.’

‘No riddles. Speak clearly.’

‘You said it yourself, idiot, the uniform is his status. The official withers to insignificance when he doesn’t wear a uniform.’

‘But when he sees us he’s in the uniform. Russian Customs or Belarus Customs, they have a uniform. We can’t expect him to be naked when we reach him.’

Molenkov said, ‘We brought our uniforms. We didn’t know for what purpose. We use medals and uniforms. I talk and you’re silent. We both wear uniforms.’

They went forward again, stopped again.

Yashkin eased his foot off the brake pedal. ‘Full uniform?’

‘Full uniform and medals, the medals over the ribbons.’

‘Good.’ Yashkin chuckled, then switched off the engine. It guttered. ‘I was stupid not to realize that a minor bureaucrat, a political officer, would understand the limited mentality of a Customs arsehole.’

They climbed out, stood and stretched. The fumes made Molenkov’s coughing worse. The side door was opened, and each took out his uniform, then searched his bag for his medals. They carried the uniforms and medals to the verge and climbed a couple of metres up a shallow bank. They stood in the rain among the dead grass of winter and stripped. They gave a show, heard shouts of mock-abuse and derisory whistles. Engines roared and noxious fumes spurted from the exhaust pipes. Molenkov was convulsed with coughing. Horns bellowed. The vehicles edged forward but those behind the Polonez couldn’t move.

‘Do I look the part?’ Molenkov demanded of his friend.

‘Yes,’ Yashkin responded. ‘You’re the perfect example of a minor official.’

Molenkov punched him. He was grinning, but the blow made Yashkin gasp. The shouts, yells, whistles and the noise from the horns burgeoned. They picked up their clothing, took time to fold the items roughly, then skipped through the moving lorries and went back to the Polenez. Yashkin started up and cruised the space left empty in front of them. When he reached down to change gear he could hear, satisfyingly, the tinkle of the medals. The fit of his tunic disappointed him. It hung on his chest now as a loose cloak would, and it was the same with Molenkov’s but he wouldn’t tell his friend.

Molenkov said, ‘Do you remember the power of that uniform?’

Yashkin paused, but only briefly. ‘The year before I was dismissed an NCO was brought to me. He had been caught at the wire of Zone Twelve and was about to carry three typewriters through a hole he’d made in the wire. Not radioactive material, not the blueprint of the layout of a warhead, but three fucking typewriters. He was so frightened of me — of my uniform — that he messed his trousers. I told him to take the typewriters back to Zone Twelve, after he had changed his trousers, and gave him extra night duties on the north perimeter where it was always coldest. He thanked me for my clemency and was blubbering his gratitude, weeping like a kid. He would have been on his knees had it not been for the escort holding him up. That was the power of my uniform.’

Molenkov said, ‘An engineer in explosives was reported to me for saying at a party that our warheads were technically a decade behind those of the Americans at Los Alamos, and that we didn’t service them often enough because we lacked the financial resources to do the work, and many would fail to detonate if fired. He was brought to me. I berated him for “negativity” and “defeatism” and for “spreading lies” and “disloyalty to the state”. He cringed in front of me. I could barely hear his response because he squealed in fear. I think he believed he was headed for the gulag. I had been twice to his apartment as a guest. My wife was the friend of his wife. To have pursued him would have meant more trouble than it was worth — reports to be written and sent to Moscow, investigations, inquests as to the effectiveness of my work. When I told him to go home, and not to be such an imbecile again, he fainted. I shan’t tell you his name, but he was one of the brightest stars of Arzamas-16 and to have lost him would have created a void hard to fill. He was carried out of my office. That was the uniform.’

Yashkin braked, waited, then nudged forward again. ‘Did you ever see him again after you’d been dismissed, and no longer wore the uniform?’

Molenkov said, ‘I was passing the museum. It was three years ago. I’m older than when he knew me, and my clothes were those of a vagrant but he would have known me. A face doesn’t alter whatever circumstances affect the body. He walked right past me and looked through me. He would have thought himself as of the élite and me as a functionary. I wasn’t wearing the uniform.’

‘I saw that NCO, and definitely he saw me. He was with his children, parking his car outside the cinema. I wore that old coat — the one from the street market with the moths — but he knew me. How do I know he knew me?’

‘How do you know he knew you?’

‘Because he spat at my feet because I wasn’t wearing the uniform.’

Without thinking, Yashkin chopped the heel of his hand hard on to the steering-wheel. The shock went from his wrist to his elbow and then his shoulder joint. But he felt no pain. Yashkin said, ‘We owe them nothing, nothing. Be certain of it.’

Nodding fierce agreement, Molenkov began to pick fluff from the material of the tunic above where his medals were pinned.

In their finery of former days, they stayed locked in the queue and, metre by metre, were taken forward, at snail’s pace, to the Customs point where they might be confronted by a vehicle search. Silence fell, as if talking were no longer valuable. They were alone and sealed in the car, their attention directed at what lay immediately ahead, not a wider world.

She was one of those who was rarely remembered. If she was remembered, she was easily forgotten. Not recognized as skills by her line managers, her characteristics had helped to create a rather dogged individual, with the trait of persistence.

The problem gnawed in the mind of the liaison officer, Alison. It had been with her for close to two days and nights. It was the matter of Haystack, the name of Johnny Carrick and the sense of responsibility she felt that had distracted her. She could have taken a blank sheet of paper, drawn a vertical line down it from top to bottom. She could have written on the left side: ‘Imminent danger? … Where are we on a scale of one to ten, Mr Lawson?’ And written underneath it: ‘A scale of one to ten? Probably between twelve and thirteen.’ If the gaunt, brusque Christopher Lawson was to be believed, and national catastrophe loomed, she had been morally and operationally correct in divulging the name of Johnny Carrick, an undercover of SCD10. It was the sort of difficulty she had not faced before, but she had no inclination to head off towards her line manager’s office and unburden herself while still existing in such ignorance. It had come to her, what she should do, at around four o’clock that morning, and about damn time too.

The power of the computer she was linked to from her workstation was immense. From it she could enter bank records, credit-card transactions, driving-licence details, telephone-usage printouts, pension schemes, electoral registers, marriage and birth certificates. She could open a man or woman’s life, split it wide and examine it.

She might, later, have to justify such an intrusion, but that was a minor concern. Information spewed on to her screen. Him, a wife, a son, an address … and she felt the chance to shift a minimum of that burden from her shoulders.

She had driven without stopping. The big car with the big engine had eaten the miles between the eastern outskirts of Berlin and the western approach flyover into Warsaw.

For Katie Jennings, the long drive was like fulfilment. She was in her thirty-second year, had been brought up in a Worcestershire village under the bleak spine of the Malvern Hills. Her father had been a Water Board engineer and her mother had taught at junior level; they were now adrift, had packed in their jobs before retirement age and spent half of the year scraping the hull and painting the interior of the Summer Queen, the other half navigating the canals of southern and western England; they had achieved a sort of freedom, and she hadn’t.

She had thought, once, that joining the Metropolitan Police, aged nineteen, would provide the independence and drive she yearned for — which she recognized her parents now had — and had grown disillusioned. The first flushes of excitement had faded. And then she had thought, four years before, that the transfer into SCD10 would give her the adrenaline surge — and it had at first. She had done King’s Cross where the ‘toms’ paraded and had known that back-up was reassuringly close. She had done the trips to the Spanish island, where her job was to sit with the big players’ women and pick up the little morsels they offered in their asinine conversations, and then she had been pulled inside the Pimlico office. There, she did the filing, made the tea and kept the diaries for Rob and George. Katie Jennings did not know whether she was relegated to office duties because of a personal failure or, a simpler explanation, because she was convenient and it was comfortable to have her in the building. She knew the way the system worked and, most probably, Rob and George dreaded the day she moved on and they’d have to find the next sucker who understood the work, made good tea and coffee, and knew what fillings they liked in their sandwiches. She had become professional in the quality of her moans, not that she showed them.

It was late afternoon when she brought them into the city.

Part of the stereotype of the ‘little woman’ was that she should have a fling with Johnny Carrick. The star, the guy who was trusted and worked at the edge, had no attachments. If she slept with him she wasn’t a marriage-wrecker. That, too, had seemed a route to excitement, but no longer. He didn’t do it well any more, was too tired, too frazzled or too stressed, and the sessions on the bunk bed in the Summer Queen had been of consistently poorer value to her. Bloody hell. It was what she thought about as she drove through the Warsaw suburbs below the flyover. She had seen Carrick come out of the warehouse, leaning for support on and half carried by Reuven Weissberg, their top target. What it added up to: the trusted stellar guy, Johnny Carrick, had lost his lustre. Was that pretty bloody cruel?

Luke Davies, beside her, had not talked much, had not dug for her life story, had not done the superior bit and had not been clever with her.

She’d thought — on the stretch beyond Poznan and hammering past the magnificence of the domed churches and the hideous concrete towers of apartments — hard, of a childhood image back in the village under the long range of hills. It was not part of her job description that she should shag Johnny Carrick, in the hope of keeping him on the road for undercover work.

And another thing she liked about Luke Davies was that he didn’t flinch when she went through the gears and stamped on the accelerator. Twice, she’d shivered as she’d come past a truck’s cab, then had to swerve hard because the big bastard coming at her wasn’t about to give way. More than twice she’d felt the rush of blood as she’d done the overtaking on a bend and across the brow of a hill. She was trained and categorized as an advanced-level driver, she had been on roads at home to speeds in excess of a hundred and forty miles per hour. He hadn’t gasped, gulped. He hadn’t reached for the dashboard to steady himself. It was as if, she thought, he reckoned her dependable, not just the bloody token in a man’s world — SCD10 was that, male territory. There was quite a lot about him that she liked.

He took her off the flyover, did navigation, dumped the maps and used his palm job for the final run-in. He didn’t have to call them. He took her right up to and alongside the minibus, which was in a car park beside a church and had a view of the front area of the glass and concrete edifice of the hotel.

He said quietly, ‘Great ride, thanks.’

She pulled a face. He had attractive hands, thin, sensitive fingers. His accent appealed. Not smart and not trying to be what he was not. She’d enjoyed it, the drive, and she’d seen his quality at the apartment of Reuven Weissberg when he’d talked them in.

He went to the minibus and the side door was dragged open. From behind him, she saw Christopher Lawson on the back seat. Heard Lawson, ‘Well, what did you learn?’

And heard Luke Davies, ‘Not enough to tell it all over the mobile.’

‘Wouldn’t have expected you to.’

‘I gained access.’

‘Did you, now?’

‘I spoke with Anna Weissberg. She was in a camp, freed from it. She had a child in the forest, and was already white-haired. She’s a powerhouse, not physically but there’s an extraordinary strength about her, difficult to describe it. I saw the photograph of her, and the painting.’

‘Describe the painting.’

Katie heard Luke Davies stutter in his answer. ‘Not easy … It’s dark, like the light doesn’t get there … pines and birches. Has depth, like infinity. I don’t know, a place of hate, a frightening place. She didn’t tell me where it was.’

‘Where else? Sobibor.’

Lawson threw back his head and his eyes were closed, but his lips moved as if he repeated the word, Sobibor, again and again.

Luke Davies said he was going to find a sandwich, and Katie Jennings said she was going to find a toilet, and the side door of the minibus was pulled shut on them. Was it like, in her mind, she’d kicked Johnny Carrick when he was down? Didn’t know, and wasn’t going to agonize over it.

Carrick sensed the new atmosphere grow in intensity. He was at the heart of it, knew it, but was not included.

Another anteroom, another deep, comfortable easy chair, another bedroom beyond a closed door. Josef Goldmann had come to the anteroom but had avoided Carrick’s glance and gone inside. There had been a murmur of voices from the bedroom, his Bossman’s and Reuven Weissberg’s, but they had talked Russian and he had not understood. On coming out, Goldmann had walked past him, then stolen a quick, secretive look at Carrick; it told Carrick that Josef Goldmann had made another concession … It was the look he had given, but with more sadness tingeing it, before they had gone to the warehouse, and before Carrick had been ordered to Reuven Weissberg’s car. Their eyes had met and Carrick had tried to hold his glance steady, but Josef Goldmann had scuttled out of the anteroom.

Without knocking, as if Carrick’s territory had no more importance than a damned corridor, Viktor had come in. Carrick had been on his feet. It was his bloody job to be on his feet as soon as there were footsteps outside the main door of the suite and as soon as the handle moved. He had stood and half blocked the way across the anteroom. Viktor had skirted him, all the time seeming to mock him with the sneer at his mouth, and gone through the inner door.

Carrick could not judge the extent of the crisis. Then Mikhail came, no warning. For a big man he moved well, without sound. First that Carrick knew of him was the door handle turning sharply. Carrick was half up, hands on the chair arms, pushing himself to his feet, and Mikhail had paused in front of him, then pushed him back down. Not a sneer but pure malevolence. The fist that pushed him held a street map of the city.

The new atmosphere corroded Carrick’s confidence. Where to put faith? There was no Transit round the corner with a half-dozen uniforms and the familiar Heckler & Koch machine pistols, magazine on and one in the breech. Once, voices were raised, could have been Mikhail’s and Viktor’s but he didn’t think the argument was between them. Sensed they attacked Reuven Weissberg.

Where to put faith? He thought his faith should lie with Reuven Weissberg. The inner door of the bedroom opened.

In Mikhail’s hand was a black box, the size of a fat paperback book. It had a dial on it, and a short, stubbed aerial protruded. Mikhail did not speak but went round the anteroom and aimed the aerial at every floor plug, held it close to them, and the telephone plug, then ran it across the television screen. He paused under the smoke detector set in the ceiling, reached up and held the thing there. There was a constant hum from the machine but no bleep. He walked close to Carrick, stood in front of him, then leaned forward with it. The machine was inches from Carrick’s chest and stomach. He knew what was expected of him, what he had to do. His fists unlocked and his fingers snaked forward. Maybe it was surprise he achieved. He snatched the machine, felt the blood rush, then thrust it right up against Mikhail’s jacket and over his crotch. He looked into Mikhail’s face and his gaze never meandered from Mikhail’s eyes. He gave him back the bug detector.

Now Carrick looked away, the gesture made. He should have been Mikhail’s friend or at least tolerated by him, but he had reinforced the enmity.

Reuven Weissberg was at the inner door and Viktor hovered at his shoulder. Carrick thought a grin was on Weissberg’s lips, as if the spectacle of rats fighting was better if the vermin were half starved.

‘Tonight we move out, go on.’ Then, as if it was an afterthought, ‘Do you know Warsaw, Johnny?’

‘I’ve never been to Warsaw before, sir.’

‘Then I will show it to you. Later we will go to the Stare Miasto, the Old City, and I will be your guide.’

‘I’ll enjoy that, sir. Thank you.’

Why? He didn’t know. Carrick couldn’t comprehend why the major player — level three in organized crime — wished to walk him round the streets of a city and do tourist junk with him. Why? Had no idea.