Timebomb

Chapter 14

Now Carrick understood. He knew what was done, and why.

Reuven Weissberg had brought him to the main square of the Stare Miasto. They had passed the Royal Castle and the cathedral and had cut down a street where shop staff were removing trays of amber jewellery from the windows. The square was long, broad, and in front of them was a black statue, in bronze, of a rampant woman, naked, protected by a circular shield and holding up a short-bladed battle sword, and all around him were the old town houses, four storeys high, and faced in plaster that was painted in ochre shades, pink and dull yellows. It didn’t matter what colour the buildings were because now he understood.

It was an exercise in counter-surveillance, and he remembered a long-ago pub evening off the long main drag in Colchester. Carrick and other recruits to Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion, had listened in hanging silence to a veteran sergeant whose star turn was to tell the stories of the Province postings he had survived, and had a Distinguished Conduct Medal to prove his knowledge of what he talked about. He thought of himself, part of an exercise in counter-surveillance and not able to influence its outcome, as bait. The sergeant had been big on bait. He, Carrick, was bait and it was difficult for bait to survive.

They crossed the square. Waiters were lowering the big parasols over the outside tables and chairs of the restaurants, and dusk was falling. He had no option but to follow Reuven Weissberg — freedom to help himself did not exist.

Carrick imagined that out of his sight and hearing, there had been one last dispute between Reuven Weissberg and the hoods — it would not have involved Josef Goldmann. Of course he would be followed. He did not know how many of them trailed him. They had been at the Glienicker bridge, and on the street at night in the rain, and had led Lawson to the kiosk round the corner from the hotel. They would be tracking him.

What did his life depend on? On how damn good they were.

They stopped in front of windows and Reuven Weissberg professed to study the last trays of amber items, watches, pendants, necklaces and bracelets, and in front of restaurants where the menu boards were going inside, and by a church door through which a few of the faithful — men, women and children — scurried to catch a late Mass.

Were they good, were they expert, those who followed him? Were they the best, or just those who had been available and dragged out of the duty pool? They were on a wide terrace and the rain had slackened, but the wind still blew in thumping gusts against the brick walls topped by the walkway platform. In the half-light, a young man flew a kite. Reuven Weissberg paused and studied him, then looked for the kite, high in the growing dark of the clouds, and he found it. Carrick’s sleeve was tugged and it was pointed out to him. He had to strain his eyes to see it. The kite was a scarlet speck, and the young man gave it more line. Carrick estimated, loose and without a vestige of proof, that the line might have stretched a quarter of a mile or more. The kite speck was over the river … the goddam river.

He assumed that, at the end of the game, Reuven Weissberg would lead him towards the river — where better? — and by then the darkness would have gathered tighter on them. Mikhail and Viktor would sidle from the shadows and whisper in the big player’s ear. Carrick would not know what they said. Would not know whether he had won or lost. He could see, from the elevation of the platform on the old walls, big branches going down the river and the swans, small and bright in the closing dusk, kept to the gentler eddies in bays at the far bank. Shadows lengthened on the near grassed areas, their side of the Vistula river. Maybe he would be in a cone of shadow, and unable to sprint, run, get up on to his damn toes and flee because he wouldn’t know what was said.

Who could save him?

Carrick bit his lip. He had lost sight of the scarlet speck. Again, he followed. Would Reuven Weissberg save him? If the tail was seen, showed out, if the whisper in the ear was of a tail confirmed, would Reuven Weissberg help him? No damn chance. He could look into Weissberg’s face, study the eyes and their depth, the expression at the mouth, and learn nothing.

Had to believe in Reuven Weissberg. They had turned away from the kite-flier and the view of the river, and walked back into the Stare Miasto and were among narrow alleyways. In front of them was a low arch. Without warning, Reuven Weissberg stopped and Carrick cannoned into him. He wondered if Weissberg sought to remember which way he should go, right or left or under the arch, which route should he be led on.

It was rare for Carrick to speak without reason but he was badly stressed. He said, and tried hard to lose the quaver, ‘It’s very beautiful, sir. It’s a fascinating piece of history.’

Reuven Weissberg, almost startled, looked at Carrick, took a fold of Carrick’s cheek in his fingers and squeezed the flesh. ‘It is not old, not from history. It is a fraud. All of it was destroyed in the war, every building that was here, the year after the ghetto uprising. It was rebuilt, stone for stone and brick for brick. It is a sham. Nothing is as it seems.’

For Adrian and Dennis, there had been confusion. It had not lasted. Dennis was ahead, and Adrian trailed his colleague. From Adrian’s view there was a shallow arch across the road. The earpiece he wore had been moulded for him and fitted exactly. The days of cables trailing under his collar were long gone. The earpiece had the double function of receiver and transmitter, but he — and Dennis — preferred the wrist microphone attached to the cuff of the anorak and the discipline of raising the hand across the mouth to mask the movement of the lips when talking. He wasn’t a bloody ventriloquist and needed to move his lips when speaking for clarity. They were encrypted.

‘To A One. Are you reckoning this is a choke-point? D One, out.’

The answer came back into his ear, soft and murmured: ‘To D One. I’m reckoning it’s a choke-point. Can’t see any other reason for this bloody caper. You got one? A One, out.’

‘To A One. You still have an eyeball? D One, out.’

‘To D One. Target Two going under the arch with November — yes, still have an eyeball. A One, out.’

Adrian lit a cigarette, which brought his hands over his mouth, and a tourist couple, might have been Germans, smiled warmly at him. A cigarette was the best reason to have a hand in front of the mouth when he transmitted.

‘To A One. Assuming it’s a choke-point routine, don’t have another answer. Think you should leap-frog? D One, out.’

‘To D One. Going for a leap-frog. Yes, I’ll buy it as a choke-point. A One out.’

He didn’t throw away his cigarette. Adrian hated them, had a printed sticker on the front door at home that said, ‘No Smoking’, but he kept it in his hand. To have thrown it down on to the clean-swept cobbles would have attracted attention, the great sin of his trade. He had ground to cover, to catch up on, and that made a difficulty in itself. Nobody noticed a man who sauntered and had time. Everybody remembered a man who hurried. He was able to dump the cigarette in a litter bin and felt better for getting shot of the damn thing. He went after the target and into what was reckoned a choke-point.

In Adrian’s world of surveillance there were three stages that were common practice. They had seen the men get into the two cars, with attention focused on the target’s, and that was the ‘lift’. A journey had started. When it reached its end, that had the name ‘housing’. Mid-journey, between start and end, was known to him, and the guys and girls he worked with, as the ‘control’. But was not, quite, control. Was not ‘control’ because, right now, Adrian was going — fast — up to do a leap-frog, and pass Dennis to take over the eyeball of the target. In doing so he would have to funnel himself through a choke-point. ‘Choke-point’ was when a target led the way through a narrow entrance, or across a bridge, or into a subway, and the surveillance had to follow or lose out on the eyeball, and the entrance, bridge or subway was under close observation. Not likely that he or Adrian would show out at the first choke-point, but there would be a second and third.

But they had to follow where they were led. Couldn’t pack it in, just call it quits, because then the target was lost.

He was coming up close behind Dennis and passed him in the shadow of the arch. Fag in the mouth, hand up with the lighter, he strode past Dennis, saw his colleague’s little gesture, so slight, of a hand over the hip pocket and one extended finger pointing right. He did as he was directed, swung to the right, and the alleyway was darker. He didn’t look left. If this was a choke-point it was most likely where the guys were, the Russians. Had become passably familiar with the Russians these last few days, since the bridge and the Wannsee lakes in Berlin, but he didn’t look for them … He kept on going and then he saw the shoulders of the target and November.

He lit his cigarette again. It had been burning well enough, but he needed his fist up again and over his lips. Adrian said, ‘To D One. OK, I have the eyeball. It’s not right to have a chit-chat, but we’ve a problem. A One, out.’

‘To A One. Only one problem? Spill it. D One, out.’

‘To D One. Bloody funny, yeah, yeah. Problem is, we’re doing caravan and trailer, and we should be doing the box. A One, out.’

‘To A One. Hear you. Leave it with me. D One, out.’

Saw a bin, and dumped his cigarette. Caravans and trailers were towed along. ‘Caravans and trailers’ was the old way of doing foot surveillance when resources were short and the perceived wisdom was to follow a joker along the street, keep back, have a newspaper ready and a packet of fags, let the joker lead. That technique of surveillance was now considered flawed because of what he had just been obliged to do, shift himself and hurry to do the leap-frog past Dennis. How many times, he liked to demand of recruits, was a guy ever seen running down a street or up a pavement? Wasn’t that guy always remembered if he was seen? New thinking, modern practice — which he and Dennis taught on the courses — was to use the box formation, and that slotted, in the exercises they laid on for the rookies, for the ‘control’ stage. When the box was formed there was no need for an eyeball; the target walked on a street and the box was far ahead and far behind him, in the next street to the right and the next to the left. The box was brilliant, but Adrian didn’t have it.

He swore.

It had to be a second choke-point.

The target had stopped at the top of a steep flight of steps. Adrian had that good peripheral vision, was using it, and didn’t see a way right or left. The steps dropped a level, went down to a little closed-in park. What he saw, what he noticed most, were the fine street-lamps — could have been the Warsaw equivalent of Victoriana, like they had in Holmes films for Baker Street — and they must just have been switched on as the gloom grew. Decision time.

In his lectures to rookies, Adrian liked to speak of the ‘heat stakes’. It was one of his favourite patter lines, and always drew grim smiles from his class. The heat stakes went from one to ten, and ten was when the surveillance officer was busted, like he went to gaol. They were going down the steps, the target guy and November. Put crudely, simply, Adrian and Dennis were expensive pieces of kit. It was not a lightly taken decision to deploy them. They hit the street, as increments of VBX, when matters were serious, and nothing that Adrian had worked on before had seemed more serious than the briefing on a ‘dirty bomb’. He would tell the rookies, the recruits, with an old man’s confidence and experience, ‘If the next stage is to show out, we pull out.’ Easy enough said at a training session. He knew the consequences, potential, of losing his target, and it sort of hammered in his mind like a bad nightmare that he would have to call in on the encrypted net and report. Would have to live with it. He went back to some old basic ones — bent and untied his shoelace, then knotted it again, and they were at the bottom of the steps. He saw them veer left at the bottom, under the furthest light. He turned his back to the steps, lit another cigarette.

‘To D One. I’m sure it’s a choke-point. Don’t feel I can follow. Leg it, pick them up — good luck. That’s two of them, but there’ll be a third. A One, out.’

‘To A One. Getting there. D One, out.’

Then there was the crackle in Adrian’s ear, and silence. He walked back up the alley and looked into the darkened window of a little gallery, old prints in faded frames, counted to fifty and it seemed an age, then drifted back to the head of the steps. He went down slowly. He thought, and it came to him like the blow of a pickaxe handle, that he had never before handled a matter of this importance. Couldn’t remember, not on anything he’d experienced, feeling frightened at the enormity of it.

He let it wait, knew his colleague would be suffering, until he had the eyeball. They came towards him.

It was ‘dry-cleaning’ in reverse. Dennis had done that often enough. Dry-cleaning was when they did choke-points to ascertain whether an agent had a tail. The agent used a prearranged route and specific locations were watched, but the tables had been turned. He hadn’t seen the Russians. Knew them well enough from the last several days, and would have recognized them if they’d been obvious. Because he hadn’t seen them it didn’t mean to Dennis that they didn’t employ choke-points. He was a man with few delusions.

It would have been a delusion to believe that former KGB-trained officers were in any degree inferior to himself in the trade of surveillance. He thought he’d done well to pick them up, Reuven Weissberg and the agent, but he was not a man to let complacency intrude on his concentration. He could sense the strain on the agent, and the stress that had built in him. There was no talk between them. The level-three mafiya man was a half-pace ahead of the agent, November, and seemed to have no conversation, just drifted along the street and didn’t look into the closed shops and restaurant fronts where the last of the day’s customers were drifting away. To safeguard the agent, best thing would have been to back off, but backing off lost the trail and the trail led — Mr Lawson had said — to a dirty bomb. He had the agent’s survival in his hand, could only protect him with professionalism. Bloody hell — and a hell of a number of people’s survival.

He had a handkerchief up to his nose, blew, and spoke. ‘To Control. I need the girl, whatever we’re calling her, sorry and that. I need her. Have to have her. Me and him, it isn’t enough. D One, out.’

In his ear, ‘To D One. Will happen. She is C for Charlie, C One. Where to? Control, out.’

They went past him. He was doing a window bit, using reflections. It was why Dennis — and his colleague, Adrian — liked to work with Lawson, the guv’nor. Old ways used, tried and tested ways. He stayed very still, kept all his muscles tight, locked his gaze on the window. First the mafiya target, then the agent. Would have liked, no messing, to spin, reach out a hand, grip the poor sod’s arm and whisper a sweet-nothing of comfort in his ear … and they were gone. The reflection gave him the route they took at the end of that street. He had his handkerchief up.

‘To Control. Get C One to the old wall, the Barbakan end. It’s where they’re headed. Just hammer at her that it’s about choke-points. D One, out.’

‘To D One. Will do.’ The pause lingered. ‘Up and running, C One is getting there. Control, out.’

He couldn’t say whether that narrow street was the third choke-point, or whether it would be up by the walls and the barbican gate. He glanced, as any visitor would have, at his little street map. Yes, Dennis respected men trained to KGB standards. Had done a trip to Moscow two years before. The rage now was for the use of the electronic dead-letter box, the EDLB in jargon-speak. It was thought of as a star performer. An EDLB was built into a ‘rock’ of shaped reinforced plastic and left in a park, with leaves and earth, even dog turds, to half cover it, and the idea was for the turned guy, the man recruited by VBX, to drive up and park within twenty metres of it, and squirt from his little handheld piece of gear. Maybe he did that every Wednesday. Maybe the embassy man, from VBX, drove by every Friday, and used his laptop, hidden on his knee, to suck in what was transmitted to the ‘rock’.

Dennis had been sent two years back to do the old-fashioned clearance check and give the all-clear that the ‘rock’ wasn’t compromised. It had taken him two weeks to come up with an answer, two weeks of frozen bollocks on a Wednesday and a Friday — and not a decent meal on any evening or wine to wash it down on the expenses VBX would meet — and four random tails on the agent going to work in the ministry and coming away. His answer was clear, given in person to the station chief at the embassy. What had he seen? Three times he had seen a man in a car use the same lighter, one of those metal Zippo jobs, and twice he had seen a woman who was once blonde and the next time a brunette but she’d had on the same damn boots with the little metal buckle for decoration.

He told what he had seen to the station chief, and was listened to, and gave his opinion that the FSB, successor to the KGB, had the bodies identified and the ‘rock’ under surveillance, and he’d known that he was only the bloody messenger who brought unwelcome news: all he could offer, of course, was his opinion, and he’d flown home. About a month later, could have been five weeks, it was in his paper stretched out over the breakfast table. A Russian was in custody, faced a charge of treason, and the station chief’s deputy and one of the staffer kids was identified and accused of espionage while under diplomatic cover. Mr Lawson, the guv’nor, would have believed him.

Yes, Dennis had a high regard for the quality of KGB-trained operatives. Hadn’t seen them, which didn’t mean they weren’t there on the ground.

He walked slowly. The guv’nor would have believed him, but might have said the stakes were too high to call off the operation. Never could tell with the guv’nor, but at least Dennis would have been believed.

Dennis went the far way round the alleys and across the square, then doubled back and tried to estimate where the mafiya man and the agent would be, and whether a minimal part of a box was in place, but held out few hopes for it. A box — if it was in London, run by Thames House and the target was a bloody jihadist — would have involved two cars and a motorcycle, a dozen on the ground sealing the target inside the box. His pace quickened, didn’t want to go faster but couldn’t help himself, and his stride lengthened. It was his hatred of a situation when he didn’t have an eyeball and neither did Adrian.

He passed a wedding party, in their best gear, men in suits and the girls in smart frocks. They had taken over a little square and there was a raised flowerbed in which the ground was covered with wood chips, the pruned rosebushes were not yet in bud, but the party had brought bouquets and laid them on the chips. With the flowers were brightly wrapped packages. New lives starting, hope and optimism, bloody good news.

The squawk came into his ear. ‘To Control. I have an eyeball, on the wall, west from the barbican. C One, out.’

He gasped. Felt his knees weaken, turn to jelly. He thought it a good voice in his ear, authoritative and without bullshit. Should have been enjoying it — adrenaline and the chase, that crap — and was not. Just felt raw relief that they had, again, an eyeball. But couldn’t say for how long the game would be played out.

The dog alerted him. It came from its place by the lit stove and bounded to the closed door. It lifted its head, hackles erect, and its bark deafened him. Then its paws, claws out, raked the door. The barking died and was replaced by a soft, menacing growl that came from deep in its throat.

He listened.

When he heard the car, which the dog had heard a half-minute before, Tadeuz Komiski started up from his chair. He had not eaten that day, or the one before. He swayed on his feet and had to lean on the table to steady himself. The dusk had come early that evening, brought on by the raincloud over the forest, and he had no light on in his home. Nor had he drunk any coffee or tea, only water. A car approached. He sensed it made slow progress and was driven carefully because the ruts in the track were deep and rain-filled. It would have tried to find a route at the track’s sides.

Lights hit the window beside the bolted and locked door, and the dog renewed its frantic barking.

He groped forward, keeping to the shadows beyond the throw of the car’s headlights, and reached the window. The car edged forward, swerving. The lights dipped and bucked. He made his way back across the room to the table and lifted his broken shotgun. He checked and, from the lights spearing inside, could see that both barrels were loaded. He snapped the gun shut. He held it loosely and went forward to take his position against the wall beside the window.

The car braked. The lights were steady, then switched off. Darkness plunged around him.

A door groaned open, then slammed, and he heard the squelch of a footfall on the sodden ground as someone came to the door of his home. His finger was on the guard of the trigger. The dog had gone quiet but he could feel its bulk against his leg and hear the wheeze of its breathing. He sensed it was coiled, ready to spring, if the door should be forced. He had known that one night, under cover of darkness, they would come. The curse afflicting him had demanded they would come because of what he had done.

The door was rapped. Not hard, not with aggression. He felt a lessening of the fear that had been with him since a man had seemed to search for a grave, then sat against a tree and watched his home. The knock was repeated. He stayed quiet, and the dog hissed in defiance but did not bark.

Then the voice he knew: ‘Tadeuz … Are you there, Tadeuz?’

He didn’t answer but lowered the gun’s barrels until they pointed at the floor.

He thought the voice sounded nervous. ‘Tadeuz … I think you’re inside. It’s me, Tadeuz, Father Jerzy. Please, Tadeuz, answer if you’re there.’

Outside, beyond the door, the priest would have heard the dog growl. He went to the table, broke the shotgun and placed it, angled and ugly, on the old newspapers there.

‘I think you’re there, Tadeuz. Let me in.’

Tadeuz Komiski unbolted and unlocked the door, then murmured into the ear of his dog, which slunk, belly low, to the place beside the stove. He opened the door. He saw only the silhouetted outline of the priest’s shoulders and head. A match was struck, held up by the priest, and in his other hand a plastic bag hung heavily with the weight of its contents.

‘Are you not well, Tadeuz? Why no light? Are you ill?’

He scurried back. He put a paper strip into the stove, and moved it sharply until it found embers and caught, then used it to light the oil lamp. Now he saw the priest look around and grimace in horror, shock, disgust. His nose twitched and his lip curled.

‘This is no way to live, Tadeuz, with this smell, in the dark. It’s wrong to live like this, and not necessary.’

Father Jerzy peered at the sink. In it were the dishes that Tadeuz had not washed, and he had not eaten for the whole of that day or the previous one.

‘Do you have any food in your house, Tadeuz?’

He shook his head, and felt that the lamplight caught his shame.

‘Can you make coffee, Tadeuz?’

He gestured with his hands, helpless, that he had none.

The priest wiped the seat of a chair and sat on it. He reached across the table, pushed the shotgun carefully aside, so that its barrel was aimed at the window, then laid the plastic bag by the stock. He had a cheerful face, weathered, and his cheeks shone with scrubbed cleanliness. He took a small paper bag from his coat pocket and lifted out two biscuits, then held out his hand flat with the biscuits on the palm. The dog came to him and wolfed them, then laid its head on his lap.

‘You didn’t come, Tadeuz. You didn’t bring us the wood you usually bring. To be frank, we have little wood at the church house, and next Sunday we’ll have used the last in the boiler. There’s an old saying, Tadeuz: “If the mountain will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet must go to the mountain.” I say that in jest because you’re not a mountain and I’m most certainly not Mahomet. I thought you were not well, that you hadn’t the strength to cut, haul and split wood, so I came to find out.’

He didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing, but hung his head. The priest’s hand fondled the dog’s neck.

‘I had Magda ask in the shop. I didn’t think you would have gone there and not brought us the wood. Magda confirmed that you hadn’t been in. That’s why I believed you were ill, and that you’d have no food. Magda did this for you.’

The plastic bag was opened. A pie was shown to him, and gravy had run down its tinfoil tray. To show his gratitude, Tadeuz Komiski dropped his head.

‘But you’re not ill, not in body … Tadeuz, I expected to find you had suffered an injury or an accident, or had pneumonia. I look at you, the darkness you keep and the weapon close to you, and what confronts me is a great sadness about you. Tadeuz, I’m a priest and you have no obligation to answer me, but have you done wrong? Why are you hiding from the world?’

He gazed with longing at the pie made for him by Magda, housekeeper to Father Jerzy, and saw the strong hands gentle at the dog’s neck. Another biscuit was placed in the slobbering mouth.

‘Have you committed some crime? Hurt somebody or taken something from someone? Confession cleanses. Is there something you wish to tell me?’

He felt his chin slacken, and his lips were dry. His tongue whipped over them, and an owl called from the trees beyond the door. He did not answer.

‘I made enquiries before setting out to come here, and I requested the same of Magda. People in the village, Tadeuz, think you’re strange. They believe you to be different, but none has told me or Magda that you’d do anything deceitful or violent, yet the gun is readied and you’re frightened. I ask myself: why does an old man who lives in the house where he was born need to arm himself and be protected by a dog? Tadeuz, I’m young, only seven years out of the seminary at Krakow, and I know little of men’s minds. What I do know is that confession purges guilt. You show the signs of guilt.’

Tadeuz felt tears well in his eyes and put his hand across his face.

The priest said quietly, ‘I ask, why does an individual who is not a criminal fear guilt? I believe, Tadeuz, that you were born in this house — the house where you now cower with a dog and a lethal weapon for company — in 1937. I think of you as a man who has done no criminal wrong, but you were a child and you were here. As a child your home was among these trees, in this forest, close to that place. In my last year as a student at the seminary, a rabbi came to visit us from Germany. It was a very special visit and we listened to him with close attention. He spoke of the Holocaust, and the next day he was to visit Auschwitz-Birkenau, an hour by train from Krakow. He said, and I have never forgotten it, that survivors had told him, “For Jews, the Germans were evil but the Christian Poles were worse.” Was it when you were a child? You don’t have to answer me — but the only palliative for guilt is confession. All I can say, Tadeuz, is that if ever the chance is given you — it is unlikely — to right a wrong, then seize it. Please, and soon, bring me more wood. They were difficult days.’

The priest, Father Jerzy, left.

The two of them, Tadeuz Komiski and his dog, ate the meat pie, shared it in equal parts. It rang in his ears, to right a wrong. He took the last crumbs of the pie and picked off the table what had fallen, then let the dog lick the tinfoil plate clean.

He was jolted, alert and aware. Carrick gaped but Reuven Weissberg had not seen them.

They walked on the wall’s platform and below them, to their right, was the moat that had, in history, surrounded the Stare Miasto. To their left, below the platform, was a street of impatient pedestrians, surging to be gone now that their shops, cafés and workplaces had closed for the evening. The couple were like a stone on a beach and the incoming tide flowed round them. It was as if they were lovers. His arms round her shoulders, and hers round his waist. He couldn’t see the face of the young man, buried in her hair, but she looked up as if in exaltation of the moment, and saw Carrick, as he saw her, Katie.

And he was gone, moving on, the moment lost.

It was like a wound, his girl from the bed in the narrowboat in the arms of another man. He trailed after Reuven Weissberg, and felt the sting of imagined betrayal.

‘To Control. Have an eyeball. On the wall, going west. C One, out.’

Katie Jennings broke clear of Luke Davies, but he took her hand as they started to walk. She realized that was the right thing to do, because she didn’t know how closely they were observed. She’d done it before, hugged a man, held him, and felt nothing for him. It was a part of a surveillance routine, and she knew it from the days when she had been the token girl in SCD10. He held her hand tightly and she allowed him to entwine his fingers in hers.

A cigarette was lit, a hand masked a face.

‘To C One. That was good, thank you for doing guiding. Suggest you return to Control and leave D One and me for the rest. Well done. A One, out.’

Smoke filtered in the evening air from a cigarette.

It defeated Yashkin. He could see no reason why his friend should sweat.

He did not have the heater on in the Polonez, but he reached across Molenkov and wound down the passenger window.

It was not just sweat, there was pain in his face, and apprehension.

The one-time security officer would have been the first to admit that the one-time political officer had turned in a bravura performance at the Customs point. Yes, there had been sweat then on Molenkov’s face and hands, but insufficient to be noticed — not like the wetness that dripped from him now. It had been an exercise in command, authority and control: out of the car, ignoring the question of whether there were items for declaration, steering the official to the front bumper and away from the tail door behind which it was hidden under the tarpaulin. Molenkov had assumed the role of interrogator. Did the officer believe the tyres of the Polonez, front near side and front open side, would get them to Minsk? They would, but new tyres were needed. Did the officer have the knowledge to check the oil in the engine? The bonnet had been lifted, it had been done, and Yashkin had marvelled at the skill shown, and the oil amount was satisfactory.

The questions had kept coming: take the M20 or the M1 for Minsk, or take the Bobrujsk route? Did the officer have relatives who had served in the armed forces? Was the forecast for rain and …?

Yashkin had sat in the car and heard the rattle of the medals on Molenkov’s chest, the murmur of their voices, and had seen the passports returned, the shaking of hands, heard the expression of thanks for courtesy and the wishes for a safe journey. Molenkov and the officer had parted as bosom friends, and then they had driven away. They had stopped at the first café kiosk beyond, and out of sight, of the Customs point, and used the toilets that were spotlessly clean, and would not have been so in Sarov, to change back into their civilian clothes. The medals had gone into the bags, and they had bought a fresh loaf of bread, cheese, a small jar of pickle and they had eaten. He had thought it the reaction to the tension of the Customs point that had caused Molenkov to gobble his food and stuff hunks of the cheese, anointed with pickle, into his mouth.

His friend’s hands came up and seemed to grasp his chest. The sweating was more acute. Molenkov groaned. Yashkin drove on.

The groan was a sigh, almost a sob, and the mouth contorted. The fingers held tighter to his shirt. A croak. ‘Yashkin …’

‘Yes?’

‘I’m ill, seriously.’

‘Are you?’

‘I have a heart attack.’

‘Have you?’

‘Should you stop?’

‘Why?’

‘No, go on to Gomel. It’s agony … There’ll be a hospital in Gomel.’

‘Perhaps, perhaps not.’

‘Yashkin, my chest. The pain … will kill me.’

He drove on, neither faster nor slower, and was looking for the turning to Dobrus where he would leave the M13.

‘For fuck’s sake, Yashkin … it’s a heart attack. In a few minutes I’ll be dead — do something, please, my friend, anything, something …’

Yashkin pulled on to the hard shoulder. He said briskly, ‘Get out.’

Molenkov staggered out of the car. Yashkin didn’t follow him. Molenkov was doubled up and tottering.

Yashkin leaned across the passenger seat, spoke through the open door. ‘First, Molenkov, unfasten your belt. Go on, do it … That’s better, good. Now undo the top buttons of your trousers. That’s right. No one who drives past will care if they see you with your trousers at your knees. You should use both hands to massage your stomach hard — get on with it. Now fart. Get the gas out. Breathe deep. Take it down. Do you still have a heart-attack, Molenkov?’

He heard the escape of the wind, and smelled it — like poison gas out of a sewer. The colour was seeping back into his friend’s face. Yashkin said, ‘You’d eaten too much too fast. Then you sat. Your belt was too tight and constricted the passage of the food. The pain was from the build of acid inside your oesophagus. Can we move on now?’

Shamefaced, Molenkov sat in the car and pulled the door shut. Yashkin eased away from the hard shoulder and nudged into place among the lorries and trucks.

Molenkov asked him, ‘How did you know it wasn’t a heart attack?’

‘Your hands were in the wrong place.’

‘My hands were over my heart.’

‘No — the heart is higher and to the side. Your hands were not on your heart. You were suffering, Molenkov, from gastric indigestion made acute by eating bread and cheese like a pig swallows acorns.’

More wind filled the car, and Molenkov’s belt hung loose. Then he belched. ‘I feel better but I thought I was dead.’

‘Look for the turning, please.’

‘What would you have done if it had been a heart-attack? We have a schedule.’ Molenkov pointed. ‘There, the sign for Dobrus and Vetka.’

Yashkin knew what he would have done, and was glad to have the excuse not to answer the question.

The young man wanted a fight. Well, he would have it. Lawson thought Luke Davies was a young colt out in a field, pawing the grass with a hoof.

They were all at the minibus except Adrian and Dennis. Deadeye was Control and had the street map on his knee in the back; Lawson liked Deadeye, respecting the man’s quiet. He only spoke when necessary. Bugsy had said again that they needed to get a harness beacon on their man; agreed and no further discussion required. Lawson respected Bugsy too. Shrinks had been near the cathedral when the agent and the target had gone by, a full two hundred metres away, and would have had a view of them for no more than fifteen seconds but with the magnification of pocket binoculars; probably had had nothing to add that had not already been said. And Charlie, the girl, had done well when she’d been called forward, and most likely hadn’t needed Davies with her but he’d horned in. Lawson thought her adequate, not a passenger. Luke Davies was the one who would confront him, and maybe it was time for a clearing of the air.

He’d get it over with. Lawson stepped out of the minibus, and knew Davies would follow him. He walked a few paces towards the walls of the Royal Palace — quite well restored — and heard another door shoved open, then slammed.

‘Have you a minute, Mr Lawson?’

‘Always have time for anything of importance.’

Davies came round in front of him, blocked his walk and his view of the palace, home once of King Stanislaw August, and he was near to the fine statue of a rampant King Sigismund III. He had been here with Clipper Reade.

‘I want, Mr Lawson, to lodge my protest at the way this business is being conducted.’

‘Do you now? How fascinating.’

He and Clipper Reade, the tractor spare-parts salesman, had been in this square on a July evening thirty-something years before, lost in a great crowd that gazed up at the clock face in the Sigismund tower.

The complaint exploded out at him: ‘I saw him: he walked right by me. He looked pathetic. He’s crushed and bowed. God knows what level, should he survive this, of post-traumatic stress he’ll be subject to. He’s down there on the floor.’

‘Is that right?’

The clock in the Sigismund tower had been stopped at the exact moment that the first bomb from a Luftwaffe Stuka, in response to the uprising of 1944, had hit the tower and wrecked the clock’s workings. The crowd had gathered to hear it start to click again, and see the hands move … He’d been in a good mood that evening, as Clipper Reade had, because they had come from a clandestine meeting, the initial contact, with an engineer of the central telephone exchange who had taken the Queen’s shilling and the President’s silver dollar, and had accepted recruitment.

‘You’ve hung him out to dry. What you’ve done to that man is shameful, disgraceful. I suppose you wouldn’t recognize that. Some sort of sacrificial lamb and you playing God with his welfare, his life. You just don’t care, do you?’

‘I’ve come to expect the dull and mediocre from you, Davies, and expectations are seldom unfulfilled.’

‘And the way this business is being conducted is just so unprofessional. We’re barging around, bumbling and stumbling, without local co-operation. I suppose, in your warped world, the Polish intelligence community are unreconstructed Communists, the same people as in the blissful Good Old Days. I know that when I’ve been in Lithuania, our station chief has said—’

‘You were irksome when you started. Now you are merely tedious.’

‘You don’t care, do you? You’re devoid of decency and humanity.’

In his mind, Lawson had been back in ‘84, after Clipper Reade had left Europe, and he’d done a tour of the palace, had seen King Stanislaw August’s apartments, and the Canaletto Room, and the chapel that held the urn where the heart of Kosciuszko, the leader of an eighteenth-century revolt, was laid. And seen the Study Room where Napoleon, on his way to Moscow, had slept, and the Ballroom where the nation’s finest ladies were on display for him that he might more quickly choose a mistress.

Davies’s voice spat. His features were contorted. ‘You won’t survive this. Believe me, you will not. I’ll make it my business to see that you’re hauled before an ethics committee, trampled on and shown the door. Not only are you old-fashioned, a dinosaur, you’re also, Mr Lawson, an individual of quite extraordinary self-regard. You play God with people and think it acceptable. You don’t care.’

The weariness was back in him, and his view of the palace blurred. Lawson said, and kept his voice even, ‘You know nothing. You’re a wet-behind-the-ears boy — probably should’ve found a niche at Work and Pensions. Go away, lose yourself.’

‘I’ll see you damned because you have no care for an agent’s welfare. Lose an agent through negligence and bad practice and say, “Let’s go get a beer.” Your callousness has no place in a modern world.’

His name was called softly. Lawson turned, looked back, and Deadeye was half out of the minibus, pointing towards the steps leading down from the square to the Vistula river. Didn’t know, did he, whether a trap was sprung or whether an agent walked free? Would find out soon, and age crawled through Lawson’s body as he walked to the low wall above the long flight of steps.

He stood in shadow, where he had been led to. Beside Carrick was Viktor. There were street-lamps that glowed dimly but they were far separated. Their light didn’t enter the shadow, but a little of their power reached the dark flow of the river. Mikhail whispered in Reuven Weissberg’s ear.

He had no table-lamp to throw through a window. He didn’t know, now, how far away back-up was. Right and left, the walkway was empty, and the rain had come on heavier. Carrick saw the motion of the water, and its strength, seemed to feel its cold. He stood stock still, and knew his life depended on what Reuven Weissberg was told and how he reacted. All others were beyond reach. They might throw him in alive, might stab a knife into his back, then heave him on to the low parapet. Mikhail backed away, and there was not enough light for Carrick to read his face.

Reuven Weissberg came towards him, took the back of Carrick’s head tight in his fingers. He kissed him, first on the left cheek, then on the right. Carrick heard, guttural and accented, ‘I do not apologize to you.’

He did the dumb act. ‘I don’t know that there’s anything for which you should apologize, sir.’

‘It was necessary to take that time and walk through the Old Town.’

‘If you say so, sir.’

‘It was necessary for Mikhail and Viktor. I have to listen to them because they have been with me since I was no more than a kid. They wanted it. If you had not been what you say you are — I believed you but they were not certain — if you had been an agent of the police or an intelligence agency that targeted me, you would have been followed, to see where I took you, to keep track of me and of you. They are very expert, Viktor and Mikhail, and they did not find a tail on you … but I do not apologize.’

Carrick said quietly, ‘There would not have been a tail because I am not an agent.’

He was hugged. Now exhaustion caught him, and he wobbled on his feet. He was led towards the cars. Josef Goldmann and the polisher waited in one, but Mikhail opened the door of the other — for Carrick.

Carrick thought it the right time for him to stand tall, and said, ‘My man was not shot, sir. You were.’

In the car, in the front passenger seat, with Mikhail driving, they went across the wide, high bridge that spanned the Vistula river, going east. Mikhail leaned across him and tapped the glove compartment in front of Carrick. He dropped the flap and saw what had been placed there for him. He lifted out a Makharov pistol and with it two magazines of ammunition. Further back he found a pancake holster.

They went fast, and new confusions burdened him.