Timebomb

Chapter 3

Viktor had told him.

Esther said, ‘It is just not possible. There has to be a mistake.’

They were back from their evening, and Viktor had gone down to the basement area. It had been a good evening, the sort that reminded Josef Goldmann of the success of his new life in London, where he was accepted and respected. He had bought a picture, and paid too much for it, but rich applause had rung round the gallery when the gavel had come down, and many had congratulated him on his generosity, while the organizers of the charity for the Chernobyl children, who had thyroid cancer, leukaemia and kidney tumours, had wrung his hand in gratitude … and Esther had flushed with pleasure. They had returned to their home, and Johnny had opened the front door seeming ill at ease, but Josef Goldmann had barely noticed it. Viktor had gone down to the basement to make himself coffee, Grigori with him. Coats off, himself flopped in a low chair, Esther perched on the arm and working her fingers on the muscles of her husband’s shoulder, relaxing him, until Viktor had come back to report on what he had been told.

‘I can’t believe it of Simon. It’s impossible.’

Viktor had told him what was ‘impossible’ in a voice that carried no emotion. Brief and factual. Nothing in the words he used betrayed Viktor’s feelings on the matter, but his eyes were not so utterly controlled. In them, not hidden, was his contempt for a foreign worker allowed so close to the family. Viktor was not Josef Goldmann’s man. Two low-ranking officers in the apparatus of State Security, working in Perm — once with responsibility for political dissent, later in a department operating alongside the criminal police and offering protection to businessmen during the great sell-off of national assets — had realized they worked from the wrong side of the fence. One had been Viktor, the other Mikhail. One had been outwardly sophisticated, the other outwardly a thug. They had resigned from State Security and had climbed the fence — stepped across the ditch, whatever — and gone to an apartment in a tower block. They had been admitted by the old lady, had stood in the presence of Reuven Weissberg and offered themselves to him. They had brought with them a degree of respectability in the provision of protective roofs, a deep knowledge of the work practices of their former employers and a network of contacts. They had stayed together when Reuven had tired of Perm and moved to Moscow with his financial adviser and launderer, but had split when Goldmann had transferred his office to London, and Weissberg had relocated to Berlin. In Josef’s mind, and he had seen nothing to dislodge the thought, Viktor’s loyalty was first to Reuven Weissberg, second to the Goldmann family. In Berlin, Reuven Weissberg lived the life almost of a peasant, and employed no foreigners … Not Josef Goldmann’s way.

‘I don’t believe it.’ Esther slapped her hands on her thighs in frustration. ‘He doesn’t drink. It’s ridiculous.’

Was it a big or small matter? That was the confusion. Viktor had brought back from Russia the offer of the deal. It had gone through the fingers of Josef Goldmann and been referred to Reuven Weissberg. He, Josef Goldmann, would have turned it down the day it was presented to him, but the decision had not lain with him. He remembered his surprise on being told that a deal was to be made, and a market found for what was on sale, and arrangements for delivery concluded. It was beyond the scope of his experience — but he would not have dared gainsay Reuven Weissberg. It was, now, close to completion, and his trusted British-born driver was locked in a common police cell, accused of driving while above the legal limit of alcohol consumption.

‘You should do something. Arrange a lawyer. Get him out.’ She waved her arms, an actress on a stage, across furniture, at artwork, over carpets and drapes. ‘What’s all this for if you can do nothing? Are you powerless?’

Esther was beautiful to him. She was admired in company, was a honey-pot to men, satisfied him in bed to the limits of his vanity, and asked little of him. When her arms waved and her throat was thrown back, the diamonds mounted in rings, bracelets and necklaces flashed. He refused her nothing. His frown deepened. He was not in Perm or Moscow where a phone call, quoting his relationship to Reuven Weissberg, could be made to a police official. He was beyond the immediate reach of his patron. The satisfaction of the evening was gone, because a goddam driver was drunk and in a police cell, because she challenged him and he couldn’t rise to it.

‘So, tell me, what are you going to do?’

He stood and pushed her aside, went to the table by the door, lifted a telephone and dialled the internal number. It was the mark of the worry hovering over him — two men were driving the merchandise towards a pick-up and exchange point, an onward purchaser was in place, and the verifier of the merchandise’s integrity had been approached — that he wanted only to be in his bed, to sleep and lose the weight of the cloud. He asked Viktor to bring Johnny Carrick up. He had liked Simon. He had trusted him, within limits — there was never business talk in the car when Simon drove. He had thought Simon grateful for the inflated salary paid him, and that gratitude dictated self-discipline. He put the telephone down heavily. Was Viktor right? Should there be no foreigners in the house? But there was need of them, a goddam proven need. He heard the knock on the door.

‘Come.’

Carrick stood, was not asked to sit. Viktor was behind him.

Josef Goldmann paced. ‘Is there anything I can do, Johnny? Anything I should do?’

Carrick thought of the man who had pulled him from the wreckage of an under-protected Land Rover, who had put a tourniquet on his leg that might have been the sole reason it was not amputated, who had stayed with him, held his hand and told him bad jokes until the casevac chopper had come in. He thought of the man who had visited him in the field hospital before his flight home.

‘Straight up, sir, I wouldn’t have thought so. Send a top-flight lawyer down there and all you do is draw attention to yourself.’

He thought of an engineered meeting. The pub that surveillance had identified — better than an ‘accidental’ recognition in the street. He saw himself going through the door and seeing Simon Rawlings throwing darts, waiting his turn, then expressing all the crap, his surprise, and mouthing off that it was a bloody small world.

Esther Goldmann sat upright in the chair. ‘We should do anything possible. What is possible?’

He thought of himself going to the bar and calling back, asking what his sarge would have: being told it was the usual, Coke, ice, lemon. Had ordered a lime and soda for himself, had lied, not with difficulty, that he himself no longer touched alcohol, didn’t miss it and felt better for it. Had been asked, with the noise of the pub bar flowing round them, the obvious and banal question — what was he up to now?

‘There isn’t anything, ma’am. It has to take its course. Forgive me if this sounds brutal, sir, but he put himself into that situation and he’ll have to get himself out of it. Nothing you can do will take him out of that cell tonight.’

He thought of the lies and deceit that had tripped off his tongue in the pub. First a fact, then into legend. The fact was that he could have stayed in the army — just not the Parachute Regiment — in one of the support corps: signals, intelligence, logistics, ordnance. They weren’t for him. Then into the legend. Joined a firm that did bodyguard work, a firm that couldn’t get their hands on enough ex-Para guys. The acquired biography — the legend in SCD10-speak — was, of course, checkable and would stand examination, and there was a bogus CV available from a front address up in Leeds: an office in Leeds, run by a guy and two girls, supplied proof to the legends of maybe half a dozen undercovers. All lies from then on, up damn near to closing time, and the run of them broken only when Simon Rawlings was called up to throw darts at the board.

Josef Goldmann turned on his heel, as if this was a crux moment. ‘What are the consequences of this for Simon?’

He saw the Bossman’s mix of anxiety and irritation. The legend said he had gone on the bodyguard courses, checkable, and had escorted starlets and millionaires, checkable. All a lie. Johnny Carrick had left the army on a medical discharge, had gone before an interview board at the headquarters of the Avon and Somerset Police, had been lucky enough to have a former naval officer — now doing human resources — on the board, who had taken a shine to him, who had remarked that he was probably, duff leg and all, a damn sight fitter than most they recruited. He had sailed through a probationary half-year, then been posted to the inner-city station at the Bridewell, had found himself the oldest among the juniors and realized he did not fit easily with them; he had badly missed the buzz of active service with a front-line regiment.

It had happened by chance. Crown Court security had been beefed up to protect an undercover officer whose evidence was going to send away a drugs-importation syndicate. Police had crawled through the court complex, been on every landing, every lift, every door. He’d heard the chatter among the full-time court staff about the undercover — life at risk, wormed inside a gang of serious people, had laid a finger on untouchables — had known it was for him. He’d gone to see the officer who had supported him at the interview board and been encouraged: ‘Why not? They can only turn you down. My advice, give it a thrash.’ Before the trial had ended he had sent in his application to join the Serious Crime Directorate, Section 10, and when the letter had gone into the box he’d rated himself able to live with lies.

‘I would assume, sir — but, of course, I don’t know, because courts and the police are outside my experience — that Simon will be released, then summonsed to appear in court. He’ll end up with a criminal record and a driving ban for something between a year and eighteen months.’

‘For definite?’ she asked.

‘Yes, ma’am. Only in the most exceptional circumstances would there be — I assume — an acquittal and no criminal record, or just a fine and no driving ban.’

‘I like you, Johnny.’

‘Thank you, sir.’

‘We have both found your work satisfactory, and the children like you.’

‘Thank you, ma’am.’

He saw Josef Goldmann look at his wife, and he saw her, almost imperceptibly, nod agreement. The Bossman’s eyes lifted, would have focused on Viktor, who was behind him. Then the hesitation … Carrick thought he had taken advantage of a situation — dumped on Simon Rawlings, whom he had never seen drink alcohol and whose breath had never smelled of it … who had been the saviour of his life, possibly, and his leg, probably. Then the hesitation was wiped.

‘You will take his place, Johnny. I offer you his position.’

‘That’s very kind, sir. I am very happy to accept. Only thing, sir, I’ve a family matter tomorrow evening that’s important to me. I’d be grateful if I could be excused duty then — Simon was covering for me. Thank you, sir, thank you, ma’am. Goodnight.’

He was gone. Viktor watched him go through the door, but Carrick didn’t meet his eye. A cell door had slammed shut, but for Carrick another had opened wide — he couldn’t fathom it, just couldn’t. But climbing the ladder would make life harder, would demand more care on the legend’s preservation, would expose him to more thorough inspection.

He wiped the mud, clods of it, from his boots. Then he took the sheet of old newspaper, passed to him by Mikhail, and cleaned the leather. If there had been a stream nearby, or a pond in the trees, he would have washed them. It was not the interior of the car that should be protected, but his grandmother would scold him if he came back to their home and tramped dirt on the floors. He worked hard at the sides, soles and uppers of his boots and did not finish until he was certain they would leave no mess on the carpets. Mikhail watched him. Satisfied, Reuven Weissberg put his boots back on, laced them loosely and opened the car door.

He never used the rear seat when Mikhail drove him and they were alone. They rode together always, in silence if he wished it and in conversation if he did not. Sometimes he would give Mikhail the role of sounding-board and demand his opinion, and sometimes he would ignore him. The former KGB officer would not have dreamed, or dared, to take the liberty of commenting on plans and intentions unless requested to do so. Two differences existed. Nobody paid Reuven Weissberg. He paid Mikhail. He was a Jew and Mikhail was not. But, other than his grandmother, no one was closer to him than his minder. And such a man as Reuven Weissberg, who was now in his fortieth year, needed protection. He could provide it, could put a secure krysha above the head of a businessman, a politician or an oil man, but his success required that an altogether more carefully built roof covered his own scalp. Once, that cover had slipped. Mikhail carried a Makharov in his belt and a PPK in the glove compartment, and he would have said that Mikhail’s loyalty to him could not be doubted. Once, Mikhail had been tested. It came at a price.

It would take them six hours to drive to the apartment. They would be back in the early morning, before the dawn washed thinly over the city, but his grandmother would be up and dressed, waiting for him.

Mikhail would take a route carrying them first due south to the town of Chelm, which they would skirt, then reach the feeder road for the highway to Lublin. Lublin to Warsaw, and Warsaw to Poznan. After Poznan they would join the best road in Poland, then cross the frontier. An hour after negotiating Immigration and Customs, when staff were either in their huts or asleep, he would be back at the door of his home, and his grandmother would greet him, and he would hold her frail, aged body in his arms.

He paid many men for their services, drivers and couriers, thieves and killers, but none was allowed to be as close to him as Mikhail, who slept in the next room and carried the weapons, and who could scent danger. He’d always had that skill, which had failed him only once — and had many times served him well. Weissberg tolerated minimal familiarity from this one man, a degree more than he would have accepted from Josef Goldmann, whose talent was in the manipulation of money.

The car pulled away, left the parking area empty behind them. The lights swept over the trees where, buried from sight, was the house built of wood planks — and inside a barking dog but not its owner. The beams flared back from the tree trunks.

‘You don’t believe I’ll find the grave.’

Mikhail went at speed on the forest road and perhaps did not care to taunt him. ‘If you want to find it, I believe you will. I understand why you search.’

Ahead, an owl flew low, was caught by the lights, veered from them and was lost in the trees. He had promised his grandmother that he would find it, and her life was ebbing.

‘When we come back … How many days?’

‘Five.’

‘Then I’ll look again.’ He let his hand rest lightly on Mikhail’s arm, near to the wrist and the fist that held the wheel. ‘It is demanded of me.’

He closed his eyes and shut out the view of trees, pines and birches, racing past, and in his mind he heard the story of what had been done to Jews in the forest.

Innocence is gone. I think I was lucky — or stupid — to have known innocence for a whole week.

I am in Camp 1. I sleep in the top bunk of three in a dormitory barracks for women, and I am the youngest there, more a girl than a woman. The first nights I cried myself to sleep and the women around me cursed and said I disturbed them. I cried because I wanted to be with my family, close to my father and mother, everyone else. ‘Why are you making such a noise?’ I was asked, many times in the first night and the second. Each time I told the questioner I wanted to be reunited with my family, that I was fearful they would be shipped on to the east, to the new settlements, and that I wouldn’t be with them. Some women swore at me, and others tittered … but it was a week before I was told, and innocence was lost.

In the first week I did not go out of Camp 1. All I saw of the world was the sky. I saw clouds, rain, and for two days there was fierce sunshine. There were men in Camp 1 but we were forbidden to speak to them, and the open ground inside the wire was patrolled by Ukrainians under the supervision of German officers. On the third day, a male prisoner was shot by an officer. He was in the ranks lined up for roll-call. It was dawn. He was sick. Those on either side of him tried to hold him upright, but he slipped from their grasp and fell in front of the officer. Then he vomited on the officer’s boots. The officer moved his boot from under the man’s head and away from his mouth, and took a pistol from the leather holster that was on his leather belt. He cocked it, aimed for the man’s head and fired. The bullet broke open the man’s skull, and there was blood with the vomit on the boot. He lay where he had been killed through the roll-call, and he was taken away only when we were sent to the workplaces. I couldn’t believe it, but he was dragged to the gate of Camp 1 by the same men who had tried to support him. They each had a leg and dragged his body as if it were a sack of rubbish.

Later that day, the third, I saw through the window of the hut where I worked a prisoner carry a pair of boots into Camp 1. He cleaned them for an hour. He used his tunic to wipe off the vomit and blood, then spat on them and polished them with his undershirt. Of course, I cannot be exact in the time because there were no clocks in the hut, but I thought from the sun and the shadows beyond the window that it took him an hour to clean them.

Inside Camp 1 there were places for work, but some of the men were escorted outside to the forest to cut timber. Some of the women were taken out to the officers’ compound for cleaning. Inside Camp 1 there were workshops for tailors, who cut and sewed uniforms for the Germans, a shoemaker’s shop, where leather saddles were made for the Germans’ horses, a place for mechanics and for carpenters, a hut where paints were stored, and the kitchen.

I was sent to work in the kitchen within an hour of being separated from my family.

We mixed soup for the men and for the women. We provided the food for all, except the officers, in Camp 1. What we made was foul, and only hunger prevented us vomiting or refusing it. In that week I wondered where my family was, and whether they had the same food as us, and whether it was as awful, and where the kitchen was that made it. It is important to understand that the camp was a cage, and I knew nothing of life beyond the fences that were interwoven with dead pine branches. When the needles fell from them and it became almost possible to see out, the men brought more and repaired the gaps.

It was a miracle that my innocence lasted a whole week. It ended so suddenly.

We were heating soup on the seventh day — it was in old metal dustbins that were on bricks above chopped logs that made the fire, and we stirred it with lengths of wood that had been stripped of bark.

The capo was behind me and supervised an older woman who put potatoes into the water, and some turnips, but no meat. The capo was from Chelm and did not have to work; she was a Jewess but was privileged and carried a short whip. She was feared. I had forgotten she was behind me, I think tiredness and the ache in my stomach had made me forget her. Her name was Miriam.

I said to the woman beside me, ‘My elder sister won’t eat this. She has a delicate stomach.’

Because of the heat from the open fires under the soup, we hade the window slats open, and I heard the clank of a train behind our fence and beyond the officers’ compound, the howl of its wheels as it stopped.

The woman looked away and did not meet my eyes.

The capo, Miriam, flicked my buttocks with her whip so that I should turn and face her. She said, ‘We live here by sound. We exist by hearing — our ears are our eyes. A train comes. Musicians play. We hear those sounds. Our ears pick up the shouts of the Germans. After that there are screams, which are drowned, but not completely, by an engine starting. Then we hear geese. A prisoner goes into a little place where geese are kept, not to be eaten. He has a stick and chases them. The squawking means we can’t hear the screams and the engine. It is very short, this process. A train coming, an orchestra playing, orders, screams, an engine and the geese — it is what we hear every day. We heard it on the afternoon you came … You should not worry about your sister’s stomach because she was dead before dusk. All those you came with were dead before the light failed that afternoon … Stir harder, or the taste of the potato and turnip will not get into the water.’

I found that innocence lost is never regained.

They crossed the bridge over the Oka river and ahead were the ancient streets.

Yashkin said, ‘They boast here that Murom is the prettiest town in all Russia.’

‘They talk shit.’ Molenkov yawned, could not stifle it.

‘Gorky wrote, “Whoever has not seen Murom from the Oka river has not seen Russian beauty.” ‘

‘Fuck him.’

‘It’s the birthplace of the bogatyr, the epic hero, Ilya Muromets. Look, there’s the statue of him …’ Yashkin had his hand off the wheel and pointed from his window. A knight in armour, a cloak across his shoulders and a battle sword held high, triple the size of a man, was floodlit on a plinth. ‘It’s very fine.’

‘Another fucker.’

‘You know there are monasteries here that were founded nearly a thousand years ago. I think that’s the roof of the Monastery of Our Saviour.’

‘I don’t give a shit for a monastery.’

‘I read all this in guidebooks. It’s where the kalatchi bread comes from. Yes, we knew that.’

‘I don’t need to know about heroes, monasteries or bread. It’s ten to midnight. I’m exhausted and I want to know where we’ll sleep, that’s all.’

Yashkin grimaced. ‘I was only talking to keep myself awake.’

He heard the yawn again, then a groan, blinked and tried to keep his eyes open. At night in Sarov when he drove the Polonez as a taxi he always slept in the afternoon, at least four hours. At the thought of it, an officer of the 12th Directorate forced to ply for trade with his old car to put food on his table and light in his home, bitterness surged in him. Such a long day. He would have collapsed on his bed now if he’d had the chance.

And again Molenkov, beside him, wheezed his yawn. ‘I need to sleep.’

Yashkin took the Polonez down narrow streets, past the square that had the illuminated Cathedral of Our Saviour and Transfiguration — he’d read of it — and saw the scaffolding climbing towards the dome. They had money to rebuild old and useless monuments, but not to pay the pension of an officer who had given his life to the 12th Directorate. They reached the doors, closed, of a hotel. He parked. His friend was asleep, but he shook him hard.

They went together up the steps and hammered on the door, a tattoo of their fists. There was the muffled shuffle of feet, then a chain rattled and a bolt scraped. Light flooded them. Was a room available? A porter’s eyes raked over them. His head shook decisively. There was an inner door of glass behind him. Yashkin saw, through it, the reception desk, the line of hooks and keys hanging from the majority … and he saw his face and Molenkov’s reflected in the glass. The door was shut, the chain replaced and the bolt pushed home.

They went to two more hotels. At the last, they gained admittance to the desk, but were turned away. They were told by a girl, challenged but evading, that the rooms with the keys on hooks were undergoing ‘refurbishment’ and not available. There was a mirror behind her head, and it showed two old men, unshaven, with dirt and grease on their faces, and he remembered how they had struggled with the spare tyre before the jack had broken.

Beside the Polonez, Yashkin said, ‘It’s because of how we look. Did you see us?’

‘What do we do?’

He was pleased that the colonel (retired) deferred to the major (retired). Yashkin shrugged. ‘We must wash, but I’m not going to the Oka river to get clean at this time of night. We’ll find a park and sleep in the car.’

Under old elm trees, Molenkov lay across the front seats with the gear stick wedged in his crotch and snored. Yashkin was on his back, his spine pressed against the tarpaulin and what it hid.

‘Are you all right? You’re not ill or anything, are you?’

Sak’s head jolted up off his hands, which were on the table, and the sudden movement tipped sideways a pile of books. He saw the cleaning woman, anxiety cutting across her face. He stammered that he was fine.

‘Don’t mind me saying so, but you don’t look it — you look like you’ve seen a ghost.’

He opened a book but barely glanced at the pages. She started close to him, as if to emphasize her displeasure at finding someone studying in the school’s sixth-form library, and not a pupil or teacher but in the white coat of a laboratory technician. He ignored her, did not flinch when the vacuum-cleaner thumped against his feet under the table — no apology — and did not move a centimetre when a damp cloth was wiped hard on the table surface. Their eyes never met, and she moved away with her vacuum-cleaner and cloth. He called himself Sak. The name was bred from his split life, his split cultures and split races. To his mother, British born, he was Steven Arthur King, her maiden surname. To his father he was Siddique Ahmed Khatab. With his mother’s family he was anglicized; when he had visited his father’s relations in the Pakistani city of Quetta he was Asian … A racial hermaphrodite, a college guy had called him. Now the name Sak suited him, and the kids he worked alongside were rather taken by it, as if it had uniqueness. It was his position as a laboratory technician that was unique.

He had left Imperial College at London University in the summer of 1997, at the age of twenty-two, with an upper second-class degree in nuclear physics, to the huge delight of the one-time Miss King, now Mrs Khatab, and his father. Eleven years later, bruised by what had happened to him, and harbouring the secret, he was a laboratory technician in a comprehensive school on the edge of the West Midlands. The work was humiliatingly easy, barely taxed him. But since his world had collapsed, Sak had allowed himself to be recruited. If he had had a confidant, which he did not, he might have admitted to offering himself for recruitment. He had two attractions for the recruiting sergeants operating from a villa on the northern outskirts of Quetta.

He thought himself rejected and betrayed.

He had worked from ’97 until his dismissal in ‘02 in the secret world of nuclear weapons.

Sak was gobbled and sent back to the UK to wait and sleep.

He was a dour man, and as he approached early middle age, with receding hair to prove it, there was little about him that was romantic, and such fantasies were rarely in his mind. A brush contact that morning, walking the last couple of hundred yards to the school gates, not seeing the man whose shoulder had hit him — couldn’t have said what he was wearing, what his skin colour was — and Sak had realized that a minutely folded piece of paper was in his hand. Had looked round, had seen only droves of kids coming to school.

Sak was ordered to be ready to travel; the details would follow.

He had not gone home. He had stayed in the library, and the story, in minutiae, of what had been done to him ran over and over in his mind.

High above the port of Dubai, the wind off the Gulf rocked the crane driver’s cabin — not yet as high as the Dubai World Trade Centre, which had thirty-seven floors, but climbing.

Not a bird but a man, the Crow could look down on the lights of the creek, the ruler’s office, the yacht club and the docks, and far out to sea where the container ships and tankers were anchored, all brightly lit.

He was squashed into the small space behind the heavily padded chair in which the crane driver sat. The name ‘the Crow’ came from the pitch of his voice, which croaked when he spoke. His vocal cords had been minimally damaged in Afghanistan twenty-one years before by the shrapnel of shell-casing fired from a Soviet 122mm howitzer artillery piece. That period of his life was hidden, and those who needed to have the scars explained were told of an operation, successful, for throat cancer. He was known as the Crow across the construction sites of Dubai.

The Crow’s responsibility was to keep teams, from labourers to skilled craftsmen, working efficiently on the developments along the coast. He was supreme at his work, in demand and a trusted friend of architects and quantity surveyors. He was admired by potential purchasers of property. He had been hauled up by the hydraulic winch, in a secure basket, to the cabin because the driver had reported stress on the cables running the length of the crane’s arm, and to see for himself the shake. That he went himself, in the middle of the night, was a mark — so the professionals who relied on him said — of his dedication to the projects on which he worked.

They knew nothing.

The crane’s driver had returned the previous day from a month’s rest in his home town of Peshawar, on the fringe of the North-West Frontier of Pakistan, and a slim, rolled piece of paper had been retrieved from a tiny pocket sewn inside the waist of his trousers. The Crow had thanked him gutturally, then read the message sent in answer to a note he had sent with the driver when he had gone home. There were no bugs and no cameras in a crane cabin that rolled in the blustery wind some two hundred and fifty feet above the Gulf shoreline. He read it, digested it, then methodically tore the paper into myriad tiny pieces, then let his hand go to the window and opened his fingers. The pieces scattered and gulls chased them.

He was asked by the driver if it was good.

The Crow growled, ‘As good as the cables under your crane arm.’

They laughed. High over the harbour, above the dhows and yachts, a ripple of laughter, a meld of shrill and a black crow’s call, spilled down. The driver radioed for the basket to be made ready.

The Crow stepped over the void between the cabin and the basket floor, feeling it pitch. He waved at the driver, then was lowered at speed.

Then — because such men did not sleep — he went in search of the hawaldar in his home beyond the Fish Roundabout. The hawaldar had prepared for the Crow the details of the transaction that had been taken back to Peshawar, passed on and moved forward until it had reached a compound hugging the foothills of a mountain range. The answer, by a similarly complicated route, cut-outs, blocks and checks, had returned in the lining of the driver’s trousers. The hawaldar whom the Crow would see had in the financial world connections dedicated to the Islamic faith who could guarantee great sums of money, coffers and treasuries of it, with no electronic trace and beyond the reach of investigators.

The Crow would tell him to make the arrangements, then wait to be told of his own travel schedule.

He climbed from the basket, did not need a hand to help him. The wind ripped his hair, and he was smiling. He said to the site’s night foreman, ‘There’s no problem with the cable. The driver’s an old woman, frightened of his own shadow. The cable is fine … Everything is fine.’

Once a fortnight, Luke Davies did the late evening shift.

The girl who was doing night duty was away down the corridor, would have been getting chocolate out of a machine, or a coffee. The area, open plan, around his desk was empty and the ceiling lights were dimmed. The girl would be looking after a dozen desks during the night and would not be relieved till after six in the morning. He rather envied the quiet and the peace she would experience after he’d gone and she had the area to herself. He tidied his desk a last time, dumped a final file in the small floor safe beside his knees, closed its door and flicked the combination to random numbers.

The desk told little of Luke Davies. Years before, the staff of the Secret Intelligence Service had been uprooted from a shabby tower block, Century House, and shifted a few hundred yards west along the Albert Embankment to a green and yellow angular building on the east side of the bridge that ended in the junction of Vauxhall Bridge Cross. It was a monument to a modern architect, derided by many and loved by a few. Luke Davies was among the few, thought it magnificent and reckoned it a fitting home for the Service that he was proud to belong to. But the architects’ remit reached inside the outer walls and windows, and carefully drawn-out colour schemes ruled the interiors. They had been chosen, after expensive advice from consultants, to provide the best working environment; walls and partitions were not to be cluttered with calendars, pictures, personal photographs, printouts of joke emails, Post-it reminders or the images of targets. Discreetly shown on the partition dividing the desks of the juniors of this section of the Russia Desk (Baltic), close to his mouse-pad, screen and keyboard, were three snapshot photographs: himself in mortarboard and gown, holding the rolled degree certificate — first-class honours from the School of East European and Slavonic Studies; himself again in front of the little bridge over the Miljacka river, standing on the spot where Gavrilo Princep had fired the shots that launched the First World War and made Sarajevo famous — his first, only, overseas posting had been to Bosnia-Herzegovina; and a smiling girl with a blue UN helmet rakish on her head, pouting as if she was blowing a kiss. Around her was desert and behind her were huts of dead branches and thorn hedges and by her knee was a child, African, with a ribcage showing semi-starvation. He called her his girlfriend but she was in Darfur, or Lebanon, or Afghanistan, and the photograph was two years old. Most of the story of Luke Davies’s life was captured in three photographs. He left his desk, went to the far wall and the line of lockers, and opened his.

He had his back to the door at the far side of the room — and did not see it open. He pulled out the waterproofs he had worn when he’d come to work, and lifted the cycling helmet off the locker floor. He heard, ‘It’s Luke Davies, isn’t it? You are Luke Davies?’

‘That’s me — I’m him.’ He had a soft south-Yorkshire accent, had tried to lose it and failed, was stuck with it. He thought his accent, at VBX, counted more against him than his degree — rated ‘outstanding’ by his tutor — benefited him.

‘Good thing I caught you. I’m Wilmot, Duggie, Human Resources. Just going off, I see. Sorry and all that. Cycling, eh? Not much of a night for that … You’re to be seconded for a week or two, immediate effect. I was called by Pam Bertrand — she’s your desk chief, yes? She said it should be you.’

Something evasive about the guy, as if that was only half the story. He asked, ‘Where am I going?’

‘It’s Non-Proliferation, Mr Lawson. You’re to be seconded indefinitely, but not for ever, to Mr Christopher Lawson in Non-Proliferation and—’

Eyes closed, hugging the waterproofs and the helmet, sucking in breath. ‘I’m not hearing this.’

‘Authorized by Pam, not in my hands.’

‘That man is a Class A shite.’

‘Pam said you’d not be happy. Came to her from above. I’m afraid it’s set in dried concrete.’

‘Should have been put out to grass a decade ago.’ He felt the sweat on his back and his voice was louder than it should have been. The night-duty girl was back, had stopped eating her chocolate to watch his display. Didn’t care. ‘What if I go sick?’

He saw a smile spread. ‘You’d get dragged out of bed — wouldn’t wash. Suicide might do it.’

‘He’s the most unpleasant man known to exist in this building, an antique and—’

‘And you’re seconded to him. Non-Proliferation, third floor west, room seventy-one. Got that?’

He subsided. ‘Right. I’ll be off home and into my bathroom cabinet to count the painkillers, see if I’ve enough and—’

‘He’s waiting for you, Mr Lawson is …’ a little laugh ‘… expecting you. Oh, Pam said — I nearly forgot — it’s sanctioned by the DG. Good luck.’

Davies threw the waterproofs back into his locker with the helmet, then slammed its door. He stomped past the night-duty girl and out to the corridor.

At the end of the corridor he banged his fist against the lift’s call button. Lawson was one of those who harked back in time to when everything was fucking perfect, talked of the Good Old Days. In the Good Old Days of the fifties, sixties and seventies, Cold War era, everything worked a fucking treat. Unlike today, which, to a god, was useless, pathetic, and the new intakes were crap. Davies had been five years in the Service, and other gods had been pointed out to him before his Sarajevo posting — red-faced old bastards, mumbling about the time when the Ark floated off — but they’d gone by the time he’d returned from the Balkans. Only one remained. Didn’t matter if every seat in the canteen was taken except at one table, he would be left to eat alone. Stories of his rudeness were legion. Davies came out of the lift. He swore and his voice was spirited down the corridor, then bounced back in an echo to him, as if his efforts were mocked.

He knocked.

A woman came out, glanced at the laminated ID he offered, pointed towards an open door.

Lawson’s back was to him. Had a phone against his ear. Shouted at it. ‘If I say I want two increments and that gear at seven tomorrow morning, it’s what I mean. Pretty clear to me, and should be clear to anyone who’s not an imbecile or obstinate. I want them where I said at seven — not a minute later — and the gear.’

The phone went down and the chair spun.

‘Are you Davies — Luke Davies?’

‘Yes.’

‘How many years with the Service?’

‘Five.’

‘Oh, time enough to know it all, be an expert. Do you know it all?’

‘I’m sure when you were told I was being seconded to you that you’d had sight of my file. You’ll have read what my line managers have reported on my abilities and—’

‘If I want a speech I’ll ask for it. When I don’t want a speech I should be given answers of one word, two or three … Sarov, what does that name mean to you?’

He blustered. ‘Excuse me — is that a person’s name or a place name?’

‘I hadn’t been with the Service a year — let alone five — before I knew what Arzamas-16 was and where Sarov was, but the sort of people inducted into the Service then were of a different quality … Six thirty, here, in the morning. Don’t stand around, go away and learn.’

Luke Davies was flushed and his cheeks burned as he spun. He went out, past the woman, and into the corridor. He had never heard of Arzamas-16 or a place called Sarov, but had six hours and twenty-six minutes to discover them.

After the bus ride Carrick walked the last mile. It was a routine for him since he had gone on the plot and into the household of Josef Goldmann. Hadn’t used his mobile. The worst place for an undercover, a level one, to call in to his case officer was on the street. Couldn’t say there whether he was under surveillance. Worst thing was to get away from the work location, then be seen to use a mobile. Back in the first weeks after being embedded he had had a back-up car tracking him during work hours, and sometimes a back-up walking behind him when he’d finished his duties, but nothing had happened in the last month, the threat assessment had been reduced and back-up guys had been deployed for other undercovers. If he had taken the risk and used his mobile — to report the arrest of Simon Rawlings, drunk in charge, and the invitation to go a small step up the ladder and replace the sarge — he would have found, probably, Katie at the end of the call, not Rob, who was his cover officer, and not George, the controller. Not a risk worth taking. Everything could keep till the evening of the day already started. Couldn’t say, when they met for the debrief, whether the promotion was enough to keep the operation going. Neither could he have said that he was now guaranteed greater access than before.

He felt flat, washed through. Simon Rawlings had done him well, too damn well to have deserved betrayal and deceit. But that was the world of an undercover, level one. Everything exploited, and every man. No relationships allowed to count.

It had been the question at the interview board. ‘Let’s put this pretty crudely, Johnny — and my colleague will forgive me the vulgarity. You get to like people in the target area, you get a bit fond of them, you get to see the better sides of them, but the job says you have to fuck their lives. Screw them down, fuck them and walk away … Up for that, are you?’

The board had been a superintendent from the Murder Squad — it had been his question — a divisional commander, a woman in a starched blouse and a well-pressed uniform, and a psychologist, middle-aged, intense stare, not speaking but watching.

He’d said, ‘I would regard myself first and foremost as a police officer. My duty as a serving officer is to obtain evidence of criminal activity. It’s paramount. I’d do my job.’

The friend down in Bristol, the older man, had told him before he headed for London and the interview that he should not flannel his answers, should keep them brief and focused, that he should display honesty at all times, that he should be his own man.

The woman had asked, ‘Can you live on your own, Johnny? Can you survive in an environment that is a lie? Can you field the solitariness of the work, which is demanded by the deception? I promise you, it’s not easy.’

They had been the two big questions and they had stayed in his mind, with his reply: ‘I had a sort of childhood that wasn’t dependent on company. Left to myself, valued my own scene. Didn’t need a shoulder to cry on when I was a kid, and I haven’t been home since I walked out on them and joined up … I did two months in hospital, a convalescent, and I didn’t have a visitor. I’m fine on my own, doesn’t frighten me.’ He had set out his stall, had done it pithily, and his interview before the board had lasted only ninety-two minutes — those of others had lasted in excess of three hours. He’d known he was accepted. Brave words: I’d do my job … I’m fine on my own, doesn’t frighten me. More questions about his ability to live among druggies, alongside prostitutes, close up with paedophiles … Gutsy words spoken, but in the easy times and before they were tested.

He remembered a final statement from the Murder Squad man, who leaned back, sort of avuncular. ‘You, with your background, will reckon to be able to take care of yourself. With us, I’d like to emphasize, you’ll never be beyond the reach of help. We take the safety of our people very, very seriously. We ask them, after due consideration of realities, to go into unpleasant and dangerous situations, but we’re there all the time, close by. And if a situation deteriorates unexpectedly we’re not in the market for heroes. We expect our man to cut and run.’

He reached the steps of the house. He had moved into the room upstairs two weeks before joining the household of Josef Goldmann.

He unlocked the front door, picked up some circulars and started on the stairs.

Ahead of him, as he climbed, was a barely furnished top-floor conversion into a one-bedroom apartment: his home. Where he was alone, where no one needed his lies.