Timebomb

Chapter 6

Carrick checked his bag again, had done it three times.

The first time he had gone through it, when tension had tightened his arms and made them clumsy, he had invented an excuse. He had said to Viktor he had no toothpaste so he’d walk down to the arcade and buy some. He’d thought there might be a brush contact or a casual approach — he’d be asked for directions or a light for a cigarette — and he had walked the three hundred yards to the chemist, had lingered inside and let the queue stay in front of him, then sauntered back, but no one had stopped him. He had been unable to report at first hand his flight and destination details, so had texted the information through. It was a shadow world he lived in, and needed lights shining bright, and those lights were brush contacts and approaches. Unless an undercover believed that support was close, he was alone … which festered.

He had not felt like this before, since coming to SCD10 and working with George and Rob. He sensed his isolation, and hated it. Could, of course, have turned them down. Was within his rights, and would have been backed by the Police Federation. It hurt that they had not attempted to talk him round and build his ego, but had taken his acquiescence for granted. Now the clock had moved on, and the chance to quit had gone. Viktor shouted from the staircase to the ready room that they were to move in five minutes.

He didn’t get a remark from Grigori, or from the housekeeper. Carrick did not belong in that household — their view, not hidden. He wore his best suit with his raincoat, and carried no weapon. The only protection he would offer Josef Goldmann was his body and a repetition of the instinct that had caused him to charge across the pavement and tackle a man. It would be his reputation, a bullet-catcher. The housekeeper was in the kitchen preparing food and Grigori was watching the satellite. Carrick went upstairs and dumped his bag by the front door.

The trust factor had been like a backbone to the operation of entrapment against Wayne in Mallorca, George had said, and the senior detective in charge of the investigation had nodded vigorously. ‘I can’t demand trust, or loyalty, I have to earn it.’ The handlers had been close and had lifted him … He had worn a wire woven into the waistband of his trousers, and the microphone was in the central button — had to be there because it was so damned hot. He’d had to plead a skin allergy as a reason for not joining Wayne and his associates in the pool below the villa’s patio, and for staying in the shade with his shirt on. They were brilliant guys who had nailed Wayne and his associates in Rotterdam when they’d taken delivery of the container from the docks. But it was history, and history had no place in the bloody present and the bloody future.

Grigori had come up the stairs, was behind him.

And the Bossman descended from the first floor with the family, kissed the kids and hugged his wife.

Viktor went down the front steps first, did the checks. Carrick had already brought the car to the door and Grigori had swept it. He thought the Bossman appeared pale, strained, the wife was distracted and the kids seemed to have caught something of their parents’ mood: they clung to their father’s arm.

Viktor nodded and had the rear door open for Goldmann; the boot lid was raised. Carrick threw in his own bag, the Bossman’s soft leather one and Viktor’s, then ran for the driver’s door.

He pulled away from the kerb.

He glanced in his mirror, saw the road behind was clear, saw the preoccupied gaze of the Bossman, as if he stared at nothing.

Viktor watched Carrick.

He thought Viktor’s eyes were locked on his face, studied it. Carrick did not know what the man thought he could learn from watching a driver’s expressions, movements, twitches, blinks. It was as though Viktor searched for a truth about him. He sensed no acceptance there … He took the car out on to the main route going west towards Heathrow. He played the part of the careful driver and often looked up to the mirror, but could find no car or motorcycle tailing them. Should have been able to see them if they were there, because that was Carrick’s trade. Almost shivered, felt the aloneness.

Remembered that cold, emotionless voice from the narrowboat: Where they lead you, you will go.

Felt he was on soft ground, sinking, and that nothing familiar remained to cling to.

‘Good of you to call by, Christopher … ah, and this is Luke — Luke Davies. I’m sorry our paths haven’t crossed before, Luke. I hear good things of you … Run it all past me, Christopher.’

It was the first occasion, in the five years and three months since he had joined the Service, that Luke Davies had been in the restricted-access lift to the top floor, east wing, of VBX, and the suite of the director general. He regarded himself as a creature of independence, a free and liberated thinker, and it annoyed him that he felt pangs of nervousness. He nodded in reply — and perhaps there was a trace of something surly at his face, but Francis Pettigrew’s glance lingered the fractional moment longer than necessary. He disliked himself for it, but smiled and did the head bob again, adopted a servile pose. He had not spoken as that would have betrayed his origins: a housing estate in the Yorkshire city of Sheffield, where his father was, the last he’d heard more than three years back and closer to four, a window cleaner, his mother did school lunches and his brothers were a lorry driver, a plumber and a struggling motor-repair mechanic. He felt disadvantaged. There were two cricket bats, autographed and mounted on the wall, but Luke Davies didn’t play. On another wall was a panoramic photograph of a villa with a backdrop of Tuscan hills, but Luke Davies lived like a pauper in Camden Town. On a side table, in a silver frame, was the photograph of a wife and three children, but Luke Davies was not even in a stable relationship. There was a friendship between the two older men. And Luke Davies was outside and felt awkward … and listened.

‘I’ve read your summary — God, what time did you write it? Have you had any sleep? Your stamina amazes me — and I find a welter of innuendo, supposition, hunch and instinct that I can hardly offer up to the Joint Intelligence Committee. There’s barely a hard fact in it.’

Davies let himself turn his head fractionally away from the director general and fastened on Lawson. Seemed pretty damning to Davies, and he thought Lawson might bluster, but he didn’t. He was indifferent to the assessment.

‘Some would say, Christopher, that there’s barely enough to run with — even jog with … Some would say we should aim for something more detailed, with provenance, then scatter it far and wide, let others share. But that’s not your conclusion. You’re asking me to back Haystack, and to keep the business close inside the Service. “Inside” means that if the alarm call wasn’t justified we don’t face the titters behind the hands of colleagues in other services, who would dearly love to see us fall on our faces — but “inside” also means that if your suppositions are justified we’re going after a problem with minimal resources, and if we fail we won’t easily be forgiven. It’s an interesting dilemma you present me with.’

Spoken as if the matter in hand was before the chair of the golf club entertainments committee — except that Luke Davies was not a member of any golf club.

‘Very frankly, Christopher, if this didn’t have your name on it, it would be a non-starter. But it does have your name. You’ve listed the resources and time parameters on Haystack, and I accept them. My caveat is that you must promise to call the cavalry if you acquire proof of this conspiracy. I suppose this is all down to Clipper, his legacy.’

There was then, and Luke Davies saw it, a brief smile on Lawson’s mouth, small cracks at the sides where the upper and lower lips met. Then it was gone. He had no idea who or what was Clipper.

‘So, you have met the agent, whom you call November, recruited him, and fought off the opposition of his current handlers. You’ve run more men than I have, Christopher, but I’d be failing in my capacity as leader of the Service if I didn’t point out that you are asking much of this young man. You are putting a huge weight on his shoulders — is that justified? Is November capable of achieving what is asked of him?’

They had been in the cramped living space of the narrowboat for an hour. He had watched November, hardly ever contributing, and the man had seemed to Davies to go through the gamut of reactions. Anger, hostility, then weakening, as if accepting the inevitable, on towards a modicum of pride that he was called out, and finally the clear-cut vision of November’s exhaustion. The girl had done well. Her eyes had blazed antagonism and her hands, through the long hour, had never left November’s shoulders. She had sustained their man.

Lawson said, ‘I think Clipper, from what I recall, was clear on such a situation … As I said, he’s what we have.’

‘I hear you, but the burden he’ll carry is considerable.’

Lawson stood. ‘In such times, you use what’s available. As I said, he’s what we have … I’ll be in touch.’

‘And you won’t forget the cavalry?’

‘Not if the moment is appropriate.’

‘God speed, Christopher. I have to hope, of course, that you’re wrong, and it’s a chase after wild geese. If you’re right, we face a situation that is quite appalling in its implications, but you know that. Good to have met you, Luke.’

Lawson hadn’t waited. Was gone out through the door, and his long stride already crossed the outer office. As he turned to close that door after him, Davies saw the director general staring out of the plate-glass — might have been examining the city skyline and the great public buildings, might have been thinking of the ‘quite appalling’ implications. He could have sworn it, with a hand on the Bible, that the mouth moved and said silently: He’s what we have. Davies had entered new territory, was beyond his experience.

He closed the door, hurried after Lawson. He thought the Good Old Days had returned and that the bastard revelled in their resurrection. And the bastard had a plaything to toy with, an undercover to manipulate. He fell in, a pace behind, as they went to the lift, and instructions were given him about a meeting.

They had left early, as the dawn was coming up.

They were gone, without breakfast, from Kolomna. The schedule for the day, as laid down by Igor Molenkov, called for them to cover a hundred and sixty kilometres, and their destination was the town of Kaluga. He had reckoned they would achieve only a short leg because the route he had mapped was on the side roads south of the Oka river, which were too narrow to permit the Polonez to pass a tractor and trailer, or a horse and a cart, without risking going on to the grass verges. They were overgrown with dead grass and weeds that might hide a drainage ditch. There were many potholes in the road, but he could not fault the care his friend took in avoiding them.

It was nearly an hour since they had slipped away from the hotel, retrieved the Polonez from the lock-up car park. They had not seen a police patrol, but there had been tension in the car. A BMW, new, 3 series, with metallic silver paint, would belong to an individual of status in that town. The damage caused in an accident would have been reported, and the subsequent flight of the perpetrators. Molenkov had the map across his knee. Beside him, his friend hummed a tune, again and again, but he did not recognize it.

The countryside was flat, dull, unremarkable. There were small farm settlements, wooden homes from which smoke belched, and little yards beside them in which cattle or pigs were corralled. There were birch forests, and the open fields between them were not yet ploughed. And it rained, always, and the river, when they saw it, was high, near to breaking its banks. He noted on the map that three kilometres ahead was the big junction where the back road they used crossed under the meeting point of the M6 road from Volgograd to Moscow and the M4 that ran to Moscow from Rostov-on-Don, two great roads merging.

At the end of that day, wherever they slept and midnight chimed on a municipal clock, it would be his son’s birthday. Sasha, had he not burned to death inside the hull of a tank, would have celebrated his forty-first birthday; would have been a man of middle age, in all likelihood would have had a family, receding hair and a paunch; would have been his father’s confidant. His son had been snatched from him, a forgotten statistic in the folly of a conflict far from home. There had been no coffin shipped first to Dushanbe and the base over the frontier from that shithole place and that shit war. No commander had had the time to retrieve burned bacon from a wrecked tank in an ambush site. It would have been bulldozed off the road and abandoned. His son’s body would have been left to crows, rats and the scavenging bandits who had taken his life. Because of his son’s one great friendship, with the younger Viktor, he had gone with his friend to a hotel in Sarov in the early hours of a winter morning.

More thoughts cavorted in his mind, and he barely saw the great overpass constructions where the M4 and the M6 came together. Saw instead the shock on the one-time State Security official’s face when he was told of merchandise for sale. Recalled the handing over of two mobile phones. Remembered the code that he had been told for when the first phone was used, before it was to be thrown far out into the river than ran through Sarov. It had come — ###****51332365 — and two old fools, forgetful, trembling with excitement, had deciphered it: ### was confirmation that a deal was accepted, and each asterisk represented a quarter of a million American dollars, which would be paid them on delivery, and the numbers were a grid reference, longitude east and latitude north, where the delivery should be made. That phone was in the river, the second phone — also discarded — had made the one call and given their date of departure. They went under the great roads that carried traffic from the south and southeast on into Moscow. Lorries thundered above. He saw the wry smile on his friend’s face and grimaced because he had forgotten to give the direction. Yashkin punched him. They went past a parked patrol car. Yashkin, peering over his wheel, read the signs and avoided being transported to Moscow, in a roaring traffic line from which there was no escape, or to Rostov or Volgograd. He heard the siren, and his dreaming ended.

He looked behind, but the view from the central mirror was blocked by the shape hidden under the tarpaulin. He leaned forward, saw the flash of blue lights in the wing mirror and heard the siren. He said, a hiss, ‘Fuck.’

Beside him: ‘What?’

Exasperation. ‘Are you deaf? Can’t you hear?’

A shrug. ‘I’m old. What should I hear?’

Molenkov wound down his window, felt the rain spatter on his face.

‘Now you hear it?’

‘We broke no speed restrictions.’

‘We broke, friend, the tail end of a fine BMW car.’

‘What to do?’

It closed on them. The siren screamed, the lights blazed. It was a new saloon, and could have outrun them, probably on three fucking wheels. Molenkov swore again. He noted the reaction, immediate, of Oleg Yashkin: foot on the accelerator, chin closer to the wheel, forehead nearer to the windscreen. For what? Futile. The police vehicle came up beside them, bucked on the verge, then was spewing back mud and rainwater from its tyres and was past them. No contest. He had seen two grinning faces under wide peaked caps, and a hand had gestured for them to pull over. Just a scrape of paint off a fucking BMW, and a broken tail-light or two. What exercised the mind of Colonel (Ret’d) Igor Molenkov, as the police vehicle slowed in front and blocked them, was the item covered with an old tarpaulin behind him. He reached back. Old ways died hard and old lessons stayed learned. He groped in the side pocket of his bag, found what he needed, set his face — and thought he looked at a half-share of a million American dollars, or the rest of his life in a strict-regime penal camp.

He said, ‘Stop the car, and don’t open your mouth.’

Defiance. ‘I can ram them.’

‘Stop the car — for once do as I fucking say — and don’t open your mouth.’

He was pitched forward, almost lost them, but the safety-pin mounted on them caught his trousers. He pinned them to his chest. The Polonez stopped. It was the only tactic he could think of using.

They came out of the police car. The bigger man had a cigarette hooked to his lips, at the side of his mouth, and the buttons of his uniform shirt were undone. The smaller man, younger, had his tie loosened and was lighting a cigarette. Both wore side arms in holsters. They sauntered. On Molenkov’s chest, hidden by his arm, were three rows of medals, mounted on a plastic frame. He saw the smirks on their faces. They came to the window, his side, and ash from the bigger officer’s cigarette fell on to the Polonez’s bonnet.

He heard a practised routine: ‘You were speeding.’

And, ‘In a restricted zone you were exceeding the limit.’

‘Without the payment of a spot fine, you are liable to arrest.’

He understood the procedures of extortion. His arm still concealed the medals because he was not yet ready to display them. Neither officer had in his hand the official notepad from which a receipt could be given in return for the payment of a fine. He wondered if they were near the end of their shift. The bigger man’s cigarette was now ground out on the bonnet. The younger man blew smoke into Molenkov’s face.

‘What are you carrying, old man?’

‘Open the boot. Show us what you have there.’

He climbed out of the car and snapped upright. At full height, with the rain falling lightly on him, his shoulders back and his medals now in their faces, he surveyed them. The medals glinted. Anyone of a colonel’s rank had three rows — a medal for long service, short service, passing promotion exams, taking part in Kremlin parades, party membership, for wiping his arse with his left hand, first class, and wiping his arse with his right hand, second class, for staying alive — and they rattled as he confronted them.

He spat, ‘You are a disgrace.’

The smirks faded.

‘A disgrace to your uniform and your country. You are criminals.’

He forgot his situation, relived his past. ‘You are khuligany, the scum that steal from kiosk-owners.’

Two sets of clenched fists, then the hands went into the pockets.

‘You think that I, with my service, do not know the senior officers responsible for policing this oblast? Try me — and get your fucking hands out of your pockets.’

Hesitation creeping over them. The hands came out of the pockets, hung limp against the trousers.

‘Your appearance is shameful. You, your buttons, do them up.’

Eyes blinked, then dropped.

And again, with cold contempt: ‘Do them up.’

Fingers at buttons.

‘And you, your tie. Are you a police officer, serving society, or are you a gypsy thief? It is for the neck, not the navel.’

The knot of the tie was raised.

‘Your shirt is filthy. I would not have my dog sleep on it. Stand straight when I address you!’

They stiffened, stood taller. The bigger officer dragged in his belly and his lip quivered.

‘I have given a lifetime of service to Russia. My son gave his life for Russia, and my friend’s father died for Russia to make a place safe for shites like you to steal and besmirch the honour of the police. Put that cigarette out.’

It was dropped and burned out in the rainwater.

‘Now your vehicle. What state is your vehicle in? Don’t shuffle!’

He led them to the patrol car. There were sandwich wrappers, drinks cans and discarded cigarette packets in the two foot wells, and magazines across the back seat.

‘You go to work like that? You shame the whole of your force. You shame your uniform and your profession. Have I worked to preserve the safety of crap like you? Get that car clean.’

They did. Rubbish filled a plastic bag. When it was nearly done, Molenkov ordered that the patrol car be moved on to the grass verge, but his prayer for a ditch went unanswered. It was moved. He made a small gesture, hidden to them, and Yashkin started the Polonez. He climbed in beside his friend and shouted through the window that they should, both of them, consider themselves fortunate that he would not report them in person to his friend, a senior police official in the municipality of Kolomna. The two policemen stood stiffly at attention as they passed … and the breath sighed out of Igor Molenkov’s throat. All bluff, nothing but bluff, and if bluff was called … Yashkin gripped his arm.

‘I have seen everything. They saluted. Really. They were kids on parade, and they saluted as we drove away. I think they expressed gratitude that you will not report them.’

They laughed. Not mirth, not amusement, but hysterical cackling. They laughed without control, veering right and left on the road, then back again, and Molenkov buried his head in Yashkin’s chest, and had to be pushed away so that his friend could steer.

Yashkin said, ‘You were supreme. If ever I doubted we would get to the Bug, the doubt is gone. Nothing can stop us, nothing and no one.’

They sat in a horseshoe round Christopher Lawson, who had the bench, and listened, while a brisk wind whipped them. ‘What you have to understand, gentlemen, is that disparate personalities are called together, and have only one common character defect. They will arrive on the scene of events from many directions that appear to have no link. It is the defect that governs them. All harbour a grievance against their society. Now it rules them. No love, no loyalty is permitted to gain supremacy over the grievance. I offer up a supposition — and I do not idly “suppose”. A warhead from the arsenal at what was once Arzamas-16 is being transported out of Russian territory. A further supposition. It will be bought, or has already been purchased, by criminal elements. More supposition. It will be sold on to those who wish to detonate the warhead. I believe in supposition. Without doubt, a clear and unmistakable danger exists, has many arms, but all of the participants are chained together by the factor of grievance. Find the origins of the grievances and we will find the men. We stun the beast, then stand with a boot on its throat and cut off its head. So, gentlemen, lady, welcome to Haystack, and I will do the introductions.’

Including Katie, there were eight of them. Luke Davies sat at Lawson’s side on a folded edition of a morning paper to keep the mud off his backside. They were on the Embankment, beyond the VBX perimeter. His people, on Russia Desk, would have done the presentation in a darkened auditorium, with maps projected on to a screen and photographs. He had suggested one of those small rooms on the ground floor, where increments were permitted to go under escort, and where the equipment was permanently stored, but the glance had been steely, enough to state that it would be done Lawson’s way, tried and tested disciplines, as in the old days. In the open, Davies understood the thinking, there could be no hidden microphones in walls or ceiling, no hostages given if an inquest was called for.

‘Names first. I am, don’t know why, G for Golf. My young colleague is D for Delta. We have a cuckoo in our midst, foisted on us, but whom we will attempt to welcome, so she will be C for Charlie: you will remember she is not one of us. Our man, of whom we expect great things, is N for November. The targets, the opposition, will be allocated numbers as appropriate. Target One is Josef Goldmann, and so to the rest of you. I gather the names are baggage picked up over the years. We’ll start with Bugsy.’

He was a dapper little man, tidy in appearance, and all that was remarkable about him was the size of his spectacles, the thick weight of the lenses across the bridge of the nose. He was squatted on the grass and seemed hardly to have heard Lawson’s words.

‘He does the electronics, and has been in my teams since he left college. My advice to the rest of you is never to complain of foreign food, or you’ll start him off and wish you hadn’t. He’ll also bore you half to death on the subject of racing pigeons. He will do visual and audio surveillance, bugs and tags, and if November ever gets to wearing a wire it will be under the guidance of Bugsy. Then it’s Adrian and Dennis.’

They sat on the railings with their backs to the river. One would have been late forties and the other was early fifties. They were so similar, could have come from any high-street shopping precinct, any football crowd or any business conference for low-level management. In every respect, they were average — average height, average weight, average build — were dressed in the average clothes that men of their age wore. They sat close, as if they were a partnership.

‘Not the faintest idea where those names come from. You’ll find them rather ordinary, but that’s their trade and they do it well. They represent the mobile and foot surveillance element of our team. They will have particular responsibility for tracking November and reporting on where he leads us. They have the additional responsibility of checking, by counter-surveillance, whether November is under suspicion and tailed — “dry-cleaning”, in their jargon. From my experience of them, they’re seldom satisfied with the resources available, and will bleat they need a dozen operatives, not two. We cut our cloth according to our budget and the practicality of Haystack. There are two of them. Next, Shrinks.’

A man grinned, waved a fist in an airy gesture. Davies thought him only three years or four older than himself. There was a buzz of confidence about him, he didn’t have to talk to demonstrate it. He was squatting easily on his haunches in the walkway. The chill off the river did not seem to affect him: sleeves rolled up, a safari-style waistcoat worn loosely, a wooden imitation of an animal tooth hung from a leather thong at his throat, and his hair was a messy tangle, coming down on to his collar.

‘He’s always been Shrinks since he started to work with us. He tediously protests that a “shrink” is a psychiatrist and that he is a psychologist. Ignore this. It seems standard today that such a profession is regarded as necessary on a field operation … We seemed to manage in the past pretty well without one, but I must live with it. He will evaluate, as best he can, the morale and state of mind of November as Haystack progresses, and whether he is capable of continuing to operate effectively. Whether I take a jot of notice of his opinions remains to be seen. Then, we have Deadeye.’

He was rather small and sat cross-legged on the walkway, eyes roving. Davies had noted the facial wound and the halting way in which he had walked to the Embankment. It had taken him several minutes, well into Lawson’s introduction of the electronics guy, to recall where he had seen him before, where he could place the jacket and the hooded sweatshirt.

‘He’s been Deadeye as long as I’ve known him. He’s responsible for the protection of our backs. We may get to a stage where we believe a solitary individual is inadequate for that purpose. Then we’ll swallow the complaint and make do. He is to be listened to at all times and his word, alongside mine, is law. You will find him at the best of times to be sour and ill-tempered, as he is now. The degree of animosity arises from his injured nose — suffered in Haystack’s cause — and, should he drop his trousers and underpants, you would see that his testicles are quite severely bruised … He is an experienced marksman, shoots straight.’

Davies recalled the charge, the scuffled struggle, the crack of the pistol, the knee going into the groin, the clatter of the weapon into the gutter, and the roar of the car powering away down the street. Saw everything, but struggled to comprehend its meaning … then realized his mouth gaped open at the implication.

‘Now, the Miss in our ranks, C for cuckoo, so she is Charlie.’

She was apart from them and her frown seemed chiselled on her forehead. She had dressed that morning in jeans, layers of sweatshirts, and tough hiking boots. To Davies, it seemed that nothing about her was designed to attract, as if she had forsworn sensuality, and he thought that made her prettier than she intended, but not beautiful. He remembered how her fingers had worked at November’s muscles, to lift him. He thought her stronger than November, and hard.

‘I didn’t ask for Charlie, but her presence with us was a small compromise I felt obliged to make. In gaining control of November, and ditching the people who formerly looked after his case, it was suggested I take her on board. She knows November, his capabilities and weaknesses, and has worked from its inception on the police investigation that deals with the money-launderer — our Target One, Josef Goldmann. If she steps over the line I’ve drawn for her, she’ll be on the plane home without time to blow her nose. That’s it.’

There were no questions. Luke Davies thought these the sort of professional operatives who did not need to hear their own voices. He would have admitted it, Christopher Lawson — prize shit and alpha-grade bully — had done it well and had achieved domination expertly.

‘In conclusion, they fly this morning to Berlin, and we follow. My colleague Delta has dipped into a travel agent’s computer and learned where they have booked accommodation. My assessment is that Berlin is a staging post. Where they, and we, move to, I don’t know. Where an end game may be played out I simply do not know, but wherever it is, I promise we’ll be there.’

The Bug river swelled and its level rose. That week, the rainfall over the Volhynian-Podolian hills in the central regions of the Ukraine was at record levels, and the sluice gates of the canal that linked the Bug to the Dnieper river were opened in the hope that the huge volume of surplus water could be taken up the Bug’s flow. With an angry, mud-laden power, the Bug spewed out of the heartlands of the Ukraine, then took its course along the frontier with south-east Poland, and its route swung north.

The river, rising by the hour, formed a new, more formidable frontier where it separated Poland from Ukraine and from Belarus. Other great European rivers had done that work before, but politics and alliances had changed. The Elbe was no longer the boundary between East and West as it had been for forty years. Briefly, the Odra river that divided the recent greater Germany from western Poland had acted as a fault across the northern area of the continent. The most recent realignment of cultures and regimes gave that role to the Bug.

At a United-Nations-sponsored conference to draw up a framework for the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses, a scientist said to a colleague, ‘To swim in the Bug is pretty near to suicide. Personally, I’d eat nothing grown within several kilometres of it. That foul water spills out over the agricultural plains.’

Where it meets the Polish border, the Bug is a filthy drain. Too high now for a fisherman going with a pole rod after carp for food. But in late summer when the Bug is at normal height, a fisherman would be insane, or near starvation, to eat his catch. The river carries extreme levels of pesticides and herbicides from agriculture, toxic chemicals that include heavy metals and phosphorus from industrial wastelands, and the untreated sewage from many of the three million people living within its basin. The Bug’s strength, as it approached the moment when the banks would break, was awesome — a power without mercy.

The scientist finished his coffee. ‘I don’t know whether you’ve heard the forecasts — no? Particularly severe rain over Ukraine. Floods by the end of the week.’

The Bug marked barriers that were clear to the eye and obvious to the mind: the Catholic faith of Poland divided from the Orthodox of Ukraine and Belarus; the democracy of western Europe and the Russian-dominated society of the neighbours. Old enemies squared up on that river, and old enmities were kept alive by it, but apart. As the waters rose, lapping at defence walls, the river Bug — had it a living soul — seemed to have taken on a brooding, resentful anger, as if it dared men to challenge its thrust.

The colleague finished a last cake. ‘And the floods distribute more of the filth. Don’t quote me, I never want to see that place again. To me, it’s damned and dangerous.’

Reuven Weissberg asked, ‘Who is it? Who’s he bringing?’

Mikhail answered, ‘A minder. An English minder.’

‘Is Viktor not with him?’

‘He is, and an English minder — a new man.’

‘Why?’

‘There was an incident yesterday. He was impressed by the reaction of the new man.’

She moved, like a wraith, into and out of the room. His grandmother listened but did not contribute.

Reuven asked, ‘What did Viktor say?’

Mikhail answered, ‘I haven’t spoken to him.’

‘I’m perplexed as to why Josef would bring a new man with him, at this time. Where is the sense of it?’

‘There was not the opportunity for explanations.’

His grandmother was at the door, watched him. Her head was cocked forward to hear better and a wisp of hair, pure white, lay across the lobe of her right ear. She would not comment unless her opinion was asked. He did not ask: it had been dinned into Reuven Weissberg since he was a child at her knee that trust should rarely be given and then only with great caution. Her mind was moulded, he knew, by a place where trust had not existed.

‘Josef lives in London, the life of the fat pig. Has his mind softened? Could he be mistaken?’

‘Perhaps, but it would surprise me if Viktor was. It’s what Viktor is for — to prevent mistakes.’

Reuven Weissberg exploited the mistakes of others. When he was still a teenager, an avoritet had agreed to share the pickings from a part of Perm’s taxi trade, and before his nineteenth birthday he had pushed aside that avoritet and had answered the man’s protests by beating him unconscious. Back from the military, he had sensed the weakness of an avoritet who was losing control against rivals for the meat stalls of the open market. He had put in his own boys — Mikhail and Viktor among them — seen off the rivals at gunpoint, and put that avoritet in the Kama river. Mistakes had made openings for him in Moscow, and more mistakes in Berlin had given advantage. Mistakes stripped men of their status, left them on a pavement in a blood pool, or in an oil drum, with hardening concrete, bouncing on the bed of a great river.

‘Did you say to Josef that he shouldn’t bring a stranger?’

‘He said he was coming, and that it was not for discussion.’

It did not have to be said — his grandmother eyed him from the door, suspicion in her eyes — but a mistake brought every avoritet down. And concern had settled on Mikhail’s face: no avoritet chose a time to walk away from the power, influence, status, wealth. It all lasted until a mistake was made. So much to plan for in the days ahead, and the talk among them — time wasted — was of a minder his launderer brought with him.

‘When the stranger comes, before business is done,’ Reuven had the smile of a stalking cat, ‘we will look at him, and if we like him it will be good for him, and if we do not …’

The increments and the policewoman were in a Transit ahead of them.

A pecking order of seniority was clear to Luke Davies. He and Lawson were chauffeured by a driver from the Service’s pool. About fifty questions had rampaged in his mind, but his silence was governed by the need to choose where to start. They were on the motorway, going west, and had passed the first sign for the airport turn-off. He had wondered how it would be in the Transit, had imagined a quiet murmur of voices as the team bonded to the necessary level of effective co-operation. He reckoned bonding would have low priority for Lawson, but those questions jarred in his head. He had, finally, determined where to start.

I suppose this is all down to Clipper, his legacy, the director general had said.

Lawson had said, I think Clipper, from what I recall, was clear on such a situation … You use what’s available. As I said, he’s what we have …

‘Do you take questions, Mr Lawson?’

A word puzzle on the back page of a newspaper was interrupted. ‘I do, yes, if they’re relevant.’

He could have asked about the lack of liaison with friendly agencies, the lack of provenance in the Haystack operation, the lack of planning and the rush to action. Instead he asked, ‘Who is he? I believe I’ve the right to know. Seems he’s a bit of an oracle, put on a pedestal by you and the DG. Who’s Clipper?’

Looking into those clear eyes, he saw what he imagined were minute cogs turning as if an apparatus was at work; what should he be told, how much need a junior know? Then, remarkable, there seemed to be a softening in Lawson’s face — as if he’d forgotten himself. He let his jaw sag from the normal aggressive jut — and a limp smile spread.

‘He was from the Agency. He was Clipper Reade. He did central Europe out of Berlin.’

‘What did he look like?’

‘Big, what we would today call obese, and tall with it. Had a fine shock of hair but it was mostly under a trilby. Smoked cheroots. Had a voice that could be a whisper or a foghorn. He was pretty well known throughout the seventies and—’

‘How does he get to stand on the pedestal?’

The chauffeur took them on to the airport’s feeder road.

‘Don’t interrupt, just listen. When kids interrupt I fancy it’s to hear their own voices. He did a cover of being a salesman for spare parts in Czechoslovakian-made tractors. Could produce anything for the Romanians, Bulgarians, Poles or Democratic Germans when their tractor fleets packed up. We never quite knew how he’d landed the contract, but he had and it was a miracle of achievement. Amazing how many collectivized farms with broken tractors seemed to be on the edge of a runway used by the Soviet’s bomber fleets and interceptor aircraft, and how many farms on the Baltic coast overlooked their naval facilities. For almost ten years he swanned through those countries with officials from economic-development or agriculture ministries eating out of his hand. If you knew your history of the Service, had read it up in the archive, you wouldn’t need to be told. He was a genius at suborning agents, but most of all he had a nose for his work. Got me? A nose that sensed the frailties of men, and how they could be used. It permitted him to second-guess opponents, to anticipate, to act when others would hang back. I was privileged to work alongside Clipper Reade, and for nine months my junior was Pettigrew. In your modern jargon, Davies, “icon” is an overused word, but Clipper Reade was truly iconic. Of his generation, he was the finest intelligence officer.’

‘And he handed down words of wisdom that you cling to.’ Said tersely as a statement, not as a question.

‘Because you don’t understand your response is sarcasm. The DG and I know otherwise. Clipper was of an age before the computers you rely on, before analysis of El Int ruled. In his day, and mine — and the DG’s — officers were happy to get their feet and hands dirty. They were prepared to exist at the sharp end. Does that give you an idea of who Clipper was?’

Luke Davies pursed his lips, looked hard at him, and thought he hacked at the coal face of the Good Old Days, bloody days that were long gone. ‘Not quite finished — what happened to him?’

‘Busted, of course. Inevitable. Scrambled clear from Budapest not more than a dozen hours before he was due to be picked up, made it over the Austrian border, incredible in itself. Couldn’t last for ever, but was pretty damn good while it did.’

‘And drinks all round, back in Berlin?’

‘A few taken, yes—’

He interrupted. ‘But not party time for the networks left behind. Tell me. Arrested, tortured, imprisoned, shot?’

There was the roar of aircraft on the runway. They went down into the Heathrow approach tunnel and dead yellow light bathed them.

The softness was gone, the hardness returned and the jaw protruded. Lawson said coldly, ‘They were agents. Volunteers. They chose their own road. Agents never last, never can. Months if they’re lucky, weeks if not. Agents don’t last if they’re where you want them, at the heart of the matter — you’ve much to learn. They get burned.’

Carrick was jolted, shaken. The cabin shuddered and rattled. He remembered those landings at Basra when the transport aircraft had come down in a corkscrew approach, then flattened out and hit the runway hard — but it was Berlin, which was not a combat zone.

He turned to Josef Goldmann and smiled politely but ruefully, as if to say he understood and sympathized. His Bossman had one fist clinging to Carrick’s sleeve and the other to Viktor’s, his skin was milky pale and bore a sheen of sweat. His Bossman was, the file Katie had prepared said, a major player in international crime. He laundered money for Russian mafiya gangs, among others. He was a target for intelligence guys defending national security — and was shit scared of flying. He had bad shakes if there was turbulence. Carrick did not have that fear: he could jump from a moving aircraft with a ’chute on his back, or from a tethered balloon that was eight hundred feet up. For him, the fear was of being on the plot and alone.

Viktor pushed Josef Goldmann’s hand off his sleeve, while Carrick let the other stay. For the flight out of Heathrow, the Bossman had been wedged between them.

They went through Customs, then to Immigration. It wasn’t Josef Goldmann’s name on the passport he offered, but his photograph was there.

Carrick did not know where the back-up people were, how close or how far. He carried his own bag, as Viktor did, and he had said that Josef Goldmann should carry his so the minders would each be free to react.

A man met them, heavy, muscled, and hugged Viktor. They were led to a Mercedes. He thought of his own world as having been tipped on to the floor of the narrowboat by the men who had corralled him. Everyone said, when they were volunteered, that the moment never came to spin on a heel and walk in the other direction.

They were driven towards Berlin. Carrick tried to act out his role, the bodyguard’s, but found himself staring listlessly at the streets of a city he did not know.