Timebomb

Chapter 8

Carrick was beside Viktor, who drove. They had left the wide avenues of the city and the squares of the Charlottenburg district behind them. They were on a highway going west. He had not been told their destination, only that at all times he was to be close to his Bossman. He’d nodded, and had been told that they drove to meet his Bossman’s associate, Reuven Weissberg. Words had seared in his mind: Reuven Weissberg will be as ruthless as a ferret in a rabbit warren, and if you fail with him — though we will try, bloody hard, to save you — you are, without question, dead. So, no misunderstandings. Dead. They went between wide forests of birch, and the roofs and walls of fine houses were masked by the trees. Discreet lanes led to them and bore security notices at the junctions with the highway. He could stare at the houses between the trees because it was his job to be wary and to scan outside the windows of the car.

He felt the hand settle on his shoulder. Josef Goldmann asked him, ‘Do you own property, Johnny?’

‘No, sir. ‘Fraid not, sir.’

‘Why not?’

‘Been moving around. Not really settled enough, sir.’

‘This is good property, here. Better down the road. We go to view property.’

‘Right, sir.’

‘You know, Johnny, it is always better to buy than to rent.’

‘I’m sure I’ll get round to it, sir.’

There were digits spinning in his mind. He estimated what a half-decent apartment cost in central London, and how far beyond the reach it was of a police constable — with the capital city’s allowance — who had to repay into an SCD10 bank account every pound, every damn penny, he was paid by the family. He had no place of his own. He was rootless. He flitted between bed-sits and mini-flats that were, most likely, either in a basement without a view or under the eaves in an attic conversion with a view of chimneys and TV aerials. The nearest Johnny Carrick had to home ground was the desk in the Pimlico building that had been allocated him after coming off the importation case and before moving on to the Josef Goldmann investigation. In none of the properties where he had lived since joining SCD10 had there been anything personal to him. He did not do family photographs, or holiday baubles, but lived on sanitized territory, could close a door behind him and feel neither loss nor emptiness. It was right to be bland, noncommittal, with answers. Every detail given, if a part of a legend, offered hostages to fortune and could be checked: the instructors preached that criminals survived on a diet of suspicion. Carrick sensed that the time had come when he would be challenged to maintain his postured identity. He wrapped the duty of the job, like an enveloping cloak, tighter round him. He peered out through the car windows, tilted his head to see into the driver’s mirror and played the part of the bodyguard — had reason to. A man had been close enough to fire two shots, point-blank, and— He saw a bridge ahead, built from heavy steel girders.

Now his Bossman spoke softly into Viktor’s ear, in Russian. The car was driven into a parking area. Brakes on, a smooth stop. Two lakes here came into a narrow channel that the bridge spanned. At the far side he could see houses half hidden by trees not yet in leaf. At their side, behind them, was a renovated palace.

His Bossman said, as Carrick opened the door for him, ‘Now we will meet Reuven, an associate in business of mine — stay close — and then he shows me property which I may invest in.’

‘I’ll be close, sir.’

They walked. There was a pavement on each side of the bridge and heavy traffic surged past. He had noted that for part of the journey out from central Berlin, Viktor had driven fast, then glanced at his watch face and slowed for, maybe, five kilometres, as if he were ahead of schedule. They crossed the bridge, and when Carrick looked out over the water he saw small boats with raised sails, swans, grebes and coots. He thought the place pretty and calm.

Two men approached, both leather-coated, one to the knees, the other to the hips. Both had short-cut hair and hard faces. Carrick, his Bossman and Viktor walked towards them. Carrick was more than halfway across the bridge when he thought of the photograph he had been shown in the narrowboat, of the near-silent movement of a ferret’s pads in a dark, stinking tunnel, and of the cowering rabbits trapped in a cul-de-sac of their warren. He recognized Reuven Weissberg from the photograph that the younger man, Delta, had produced from the file. He seemed to hear every word, and the inflections, of the older man, Golf. Reuven Weissberg wore the shorter leather coat, which was older and frayed, and Carrick assumed it a less prized possession than that of the man standing a couple of paces in front. He did not do stereotypes. The prejudices of allocating men and women to pigeon-holes was dangerous to the culture of an undercover, level one. A prejudice, stereotyped, would have made him look for caricature Jewish features. There were none.

They came off the bridge. Behind the waiting men was a large villa that had decades-old bullet pocks in its walls. Its windows were boarded, and skirting it was a wide path for cyclists and those promenading beside the lake. He saw the villa, the walkers and a cyclist who pulled a mini-trailer in which a child was perched, because it was his role as a bodyguard to scan.

Over his shoulder, ‘Johnny, you should meet my associate, Reuven Weissberg.’

The man in the long leather jacket, which had more status and was obviously the more expensive, took a half-pace forward, as if he had heard what the Bossman said.

So easy … Carrick’s mind raced. He had not done this exercise in role-play during his training. So simple and therefore so easy to make the mistake. He had been shown the photograph of Reuven Weissberg and it was a good likeness, would have been taken by the German police, an organized-crime unit, within the last six months. As his legs went leaden, Carrick absorbed the extent of the trick offered him. If he went a half-stride beyond the long leather coat and greeted the man in the hip-length coat, he demonstrated that he had been shown an identifying photograph.

Carrick reached out his hand to the man in the long coat, whom he knew was not Weissberg. He tried a brief smile and his heart pounded. He said, ‘I’m Johnny — pleased to meet you, sir.’

There was laughter, not warm but cold, and no hand was pushed forward.

His Bossman said, ‘No, that is not Reuven. That is his friend.’

The one he knew to be Reuven Weissberg now came a step closer. The hand was extended. Carrick flushed, as if he had made an error. There was an exchange, in German, as his hand was held in a vice grip, between Reuven Weissberg and Josef Goldmann. Then Carrick’s hand was freed and the two men hugged. Carrick did not understand what was said.

His Bossman turned to him. ‘My associate wants to know, Johnny, why I have brought you with me. I said you were here because you had saved my life, and that is a good enough reason.’

Good enough? Carrick saw that Reuven Weissberg pondered on it, frowned fractionally, then turned to walk. He also saw huge properties, masked by trees, and thought them to be the ones that might be purchased to facilitate laundering, for investment.

He believed he had passed a test, did not delude himself that it was the last — and felt the sting of vomit in his throat.

‘It is the Glienicker bridge,’ Lawson said. ‘Two hundred metres across, and it’s where we did the big prisoner exchanges. Did it when they had someone to trade, and we did. Incredibly exciting, with a choreography all of its own. Two men starting to walk from either end when the second hand of synchronized watches reached the hour, and crossing in the centre — they never seemed to look at each other as they passed. See that building on the other side, young man? That used to be stuffed tight with the East’s security people, a sardine tin of armed men. Took months to set an exchange up, and it could all go down at the last moment. It was the American sector, of course, but Clipper used to bring me here for the theatre of it — and we’d go across there, the Schloss built as a hunting lodge for Prince Karl, the brother of Friedrich Wilhelm the Third, and there was a café and—’

‘Don’t tell me, Mr Lawson. You’d have a pot of tea together.’

‘Yes, we did — most times.’

He was staring across the expanse of the bridge, and on the far side was Königstrasse and the wide road on into Potsdam. Lawson felt, almost, joyous, reckoned himself blessed to have been brought here. They had travelled, again, in two vehicles. The woman, codename Charlie, had driven the car carrying himself and Davies, following the minibus, Deadeye at its wheel. They were mob-handed that morning. Deadeye had now pulled off at the approach to the bridge over the Wannsee, and had stayed in the minibus with Bugsy and Shrinks. On either side of the bridge, on the pavements, were Adrian and Dennis, the stalkers. Lawson found it hard, at that distance, and with the bridge’s slight hump, to follow the targets but they’d had a good view of November and Target One crossing, a reasonable glimpse of the meeting, and that had gone well. He was wired, from a transmitter on a harness on his back, a microphone in his sleeve at the wrist and a button for speech in his pocket and a moulded earpiece, to Bugsy.

Lawson raised his arm and his cufflink brushed his mouth. His finger, in the pocket, held down the button. ‘Golf here. Move off, maintain visual contact. Out.’

Heard a little chuckle. ‘Best you stay with the trade talk, Golf. We call it eyeball. Will do, out.’

The sun was on his face. He thought years were propelled off his shoulders: age was shed like a snake’s skin. The minibus came past and headed on to the bridge.

Then something was nagging at him. ‘I suppose you had to be pretty high up the pecking order to get a Glienicker swap — assuming he’d been arrested, higher than Foxglove was. What counted for an acceptable swap?’

‘If the man in their cells was one of our high fliers or, indeed, if he was one of us.’

‘Is November “one of us”?’

‘That is a provocative and pointless question.’

‘I just wanted to know whether I should keep a couple of beers handy in my kit, and a few teabags … just in case.’

The car pulled up.

Lawson said, ‘If you believe that Haystack depends on your presence — the participation of a junior — you delude yourself. I would imagine there is a flight for Heathrow out of Tempelhof every two hours, and I’m sure there are seats available.’

The young man slipped, sullen, into the back of the car, and Lawson took the front seat. He anticipated now that the pace of events would quicken. Charlie, his cuckoo, drove over the bridge, and at its highest point he could see Adrian and Dennis on different sides of the path to the right, meandering. Ahead of them was the little group with the agent — he thought Luke Davies decent enough but lacking spine and needing to learn, fast, the realities of the trade — and they had stopped in front of a villa that had scaffolding across its façade. The agent stood away to the left, as though isolated.

Now money had usurped — the talk of money.

‘Ten million euros each, paid through the Caymans or the Bahamas. That is the price we should be looking to pay, Reuven. Pay too much too quickly and the vendor worries. Pay too little, haggle too much, and the vendor goes elsewhere. A total of twenty million euros, which is available on call. That’s a decent price for the two properties.’

Reuven Weissberg stood alongside Josef Goldmann. He listened to Josef when the talk was of money. Viktor, Mikhail and the young Englishman, who walked with an awkward limp, were away from them and could not have heard their conversation. It was a residential street without residents. Reuven Weissberg had no interest in the investments that Josef Goldmann placed in his name, or in using the profits that Josef Goldmann fashioned for him. He thought he sensed excitement in the man, as if the opportunity to trade gripped him with pleasure. Reuven thought the houses gaudy and pretentious, and he believed they would attract attention from the revenue authorities. He had many such investments, and his identity was hidden in the paperwork by the names of the nominees Josef Goldmann created for him.

‘Yes, I can do that. You leave it with me and I’ll do it. I think, Reuven, they’re very suitable for you, and there isn’t a better part of Berlin for return on capital investment. This area, off Königstrasse, between the lake and Potsdam, will become the new residence of the capital’s élite. Consider it done.’

He thought that Josef Goldmann would have chosen either of the houses — if he should ever move from London to Berlin — as a home for himself, Esther and his children. Goldmann believed an address made a statement. The statement that Reuven Weissberg made was an apartment in the city centre that was small, adequate for himself and his grandmother, enough. Josef Goldmann had said he would not move without the young man, Carrick, at his side. He had babbled about an attack. Reuven had heard the story, but had interrupted once to put a single question: had there been warning of an attempt on Josef’s life? ‘No warning. Nothing has ever happened in London that gave me to believe I might be a target for assassination. I tell you, I had one piece of luck, one, but it was sufficient. My English driver, an idiot, was caught by the police while off-duty with excess of alcohol in his blood. I upgraded Johnny. I let him drive me into the City. I was leaving a meeting, coming on to the pavement, and was attacked and Grigori, whom you chose for me, froze and was useless. I would have been dead but for Johnny, his courage. He risked his own life to save mine, and it was lucky he was with me.’ Then they had come to the houses and the talk had changed to money.

‘But the reason I’m here, is that in place?’

Reuven nodded.

A breathy hiss. ‘You risk so much for all of us … On my side, all is prepared.’

Reuven cuffed his launderer’s arm.

‘If you had asked my advice, I wouldn’t have suggested …’

He walked away.

‘… that you proceed. But you didn’t ask it.’

He quickened his stride, turned his back on the two houses he would buy. First, Josef Goldmann scurried to keep pace with him, then the three other men — Mikhail, Viktor and the Englishman — jogged to catch up. He thought the one called Johnny had a good face, perhaps an honest face … It was three days away, and two old men drove from Sarov to deliver it, and he did not take advice on the matter — would not … He remembered that his own man, Mikhail, had not reacted with sufficient speed to block the gunmen who had shot him in the arm, had not risked his own life. It was an honest face.

In the car park, Bugsy circled the vehicle. Back when he had started his career, an electronic tracking device had been the size of a house brick and had needed clamps and supports to hold it in place — always more reliable than the magnets police forces used. Graduating out of the workshops — in the secure lock-ups of what had seemed, to a casual eye, a small industrial estate in Kennington — he had reckoned ETDs to be high risk. Then they had called the brick-scale metal boxes ‘tags’, still did.

He only needed one circuit of the car that had driven Target One and November to the lakeside and the car park at the near end of the iron bridge. It was a perfunctory check. In his steel case in the back of the minibus, Bugsy had a selection of tags that ranged in bulk from a cigarette packet to a matchbox. Easy enough to attach one — and easy enough to blow the whole show away.

He turned away from the car. He understood the importance of getting a tag under or into it, but shook his head — to himself — ruefully as he calculated the risk factors. In the ideal world that, as a professional, he hankered for, Bugsy would have identified the make and series of a vehicle, then called the showroom that sold it and a demonstration model would have been delivered. It would then have been driven into the lock-ups and lifted up on a ramp. He would have crawled under, over and through it to learn where was the best chance of secreting a tag, then the tag would have been activated and Bugsy would have checked the quality of the signal. He prided himself on that professionalism, and on his ability to make the decision as to where in a car the most satisfactory hiding place equated with minimum interference in the signal the tag emitted.

If they were organized crime — which the guv’nor, Mr Lawson, said they were — then it stood to reason they would have access, and frequently, to the best gear. Trouble was, their gear was usually better than that issued to Bugsy from the industrial-estate workshops. The trick that high-level organized crime employed, in Bugsy’s experience, was to drive a few kilometres, stop, deploy with the detector, then sweep. Good tactics. The batteries of a tag had a life of no more than twenty hours and were activated by remote. A target car drove away and the tag was switched to transmit, but the chances were pretty damn near certain that there would not be time to cut the transmission bleep before the detector had registered the signal — even if it was on ‘deep snore’, the weakest — and that was a show blown away.

Bugsy reached the minibus and went past it to the car to report.

He thought that the guv’nor might be dozing but an eye was opened when he climbed in. The girl they called Charlie watched him keenly.

Bugsy said, ‘Wouldn’t be possible to lodge a tag and maintain integrity. Sorry, but we have to do without.’

The guv’nor nodded, didn’t seem disappointed.

Bugsy said, ‘Not the circumstances where I could do the business and feel satisfied. Just have to be the eyeball stuff.’

The girl, Charlie, reacted — blazed. ‘Brilliant. Left out on his own, is he? Aren’t you aware of the shit he’s facing? How do we keep close if there’s no bug on his wheels? Have you a better description, or is this cutting him adrift? I thought you were supposed to be the bloody expert.’

Bugsy said, ‘If you didn’t know it, Miss, putting our November in a vehicle with a tag in it, and the tag’s found, puts him at higher risk. And I am the bloody expert and that’s my assessment. Oh, and putting a wire on him adds to a greater risk. When it’s possible I’ll do it, and when it’s not I won’t. Got me, Miss?’

He went back to the minibus, unlocked it, climbed in. He settled on the back seat. He was alone. The others, his travelling companions, were all across the far side of the bridge, putting the eyeball on November. Adrian and Dennis would be up front and closest. He’d seen November walking away over the bridge that spanned the narrow point and had thought the man pale-faced, shoulders hunched, as if his confidence ebbed … Well, it would, wouldn’t it? He was alone, cut off from them. He thought of the meal he had toyed with last night in their hotel, foreign food that he couldn’t abide, and he yearned for what he would have had the previous evening if he’d been at home — a village in the Surrey hills near Guildford — a plate of butcher’s sausages, the chips his wife cooked and sharp brown sauce in a puddle across them.

The undercover man, November, was isolated — might be lost, might be taken beyond eyeball capability, might be beyond reach — but anything was better than a show blown away. Reputations didn’t survive failure.

She attacked. ‘Have you done, Mr Lawson, any sort of risk assessment on this?’

His eyes were on her, clear and unwavering in their gaze.

The absence of response stoked her anger. ‘Don’t you know there’s legislation on health and safety that applies to him as much as to a roofer on your house?’

He seemed to smile, cold, and little cracks appeared at the edge of the thin lips.

Katie Jennings’s voice rose, battered the interior of the car. ‘So, no risk assessment, no acknowledgement of health and safety, and you reckon that satisfactory. Not where I’m coming from, it isn’t.’

He tilted his head and stared out through the windscreen, looked down the length of the bridge.

‘Has this gone through the Office of Surveillance Commissioners? Does it have their approval?’

A quick frown had nudged on to his forehead, as if she was a fly that annoyed him and needed swatting away.

She persisted, ‘What about duty of care? Does duty of care to an undercover not exist in your bloody games?’

‘Before your tone develops to hysteria, understand, please, you are now operating in a different world. Learn that, and quickly.’

He had jerked upright. Now she was ignored. He was out of the car, went to the bonnet and settled his weight on it. She looked past him. They were coming back across the bridge. She saw Johnny Carrick and he seemed to walk slowly, leaden, behind Josef Goldmann. The Russian minder was ahead … There was no tag in the car. If the eyeball was lost, he was alone. They had no bloody right to ask it of him — but it was a different world, the man had said. The nice guy, the best of all of them, Luke, was a clear fifty yards in front of the little group on the pavement of the Glienicker bridge and strode fast, had a good athletic walk, and never looked behind. She saw Bugsy come sharply out of the minibus and trot forward to intercept him at the point where the bridge met the bank, and he seemed to point to a distant part of the lake, in an innocent way, and was talking. Would have been telling Luke there was to be no tag in the car. She swore, and felt no better for it.

‘Excuse me, Mr Goldmann, I need to use the toilet.’

‘What, Johnny?’

‘There’s one down there.’ Carrick pointed to a concrete block beside a café complex. ‘Be as quick as I can.’

The toilets were next to the walkway that led alongside the lakeshore. Couldn’t think of anywhere better. He had been aware of the tall guy, codename Delta, on the bridge in front of him. Just had to hope … Carrick had gone two days, or three, since he’d been on the plot and in the Goldmann household without contact with his cover officer, and it hadn’t seemed to matter. Once he had gone a full week without filling in the Book with the log of events — so bloody much to report. Would only have confessed it to himself, but he had felt lifted by the sight of the man ahead of him on the bridge. Also, would not have confessed, except to himself, that the associate — Reuven Weissberg — oozed threat. Thought he had come through the trick played on him. Hadn’t slept on his breaks in the guard roster, was damn near knackered. Knew he was under a new level of scrutiny.

There were steps down to the toilet and they had a railing for older people. He had to hold it. Could remember former certainties — at the interview board, and saying he had believed he could cope well with the stress of going undercover.

He pushed open the door. Had no change in his pocket, so dropped a five-euro note into the saucer on the table in front of the attendant. It won no gratitude from the old guy sitting there. Went inside and into the Herren section, then to a stall, unzipped and tried to piss. Could not. A man was beside him and a child. The man eyed him. He had opened his fly but couldn’t do it. Stood there. Willed himself. The man left with the child. He looked at the cubicles, saw the three doors were ajar, that he was alone. It came in a dribble. The door opened behind him but Carrick didn’t turn.

He heard — soft Yorkshire accent and quietspoken, ‘Don’t know how long you have … As much as anything to let you know we’re here and close.’

‘Fuck that — try something important.’

‘Easy, friend. We have you on eyeball, and—’

‘I don’t have time now — has the car a tag?’

A hesitation. ‘No.’

‘Why the fuck not?’

‘Absence of time and opportunity. What are you learning?’

‘What am I learning? That’s good. I’m learning that I’m regarded here with the fondness, and trust, of a live rat. Weissberg and his hood are suspicious — suspicious times ten — and—’

‘We’re staying close, guaranteed.’

‘That’s a fucking comfort. I’m not a Russian speaker, not a German speaker. I don’t know where I’m being led. It’s like I’m blindfolded.’

‘You lead, we follow.’

‘Great — how far behind?

He heard the footsteps, then the squeal of the door. He lost the whisper. Spoke loudly, ‘Sorry, can’t help you, don’t speak German.’

Carrick pulled up his zip. Viktor was in the doorway. He tapped his wristwatch. Carrick said, ‘Apologies if I’ve kept you waiting.’

He followed Viktor out of the public lavatory.

Yashkin peered over the wheel, eyes never off the centre of the road as he spoke: ‘As we are now in the Bryansk oblast there are things about this place you should know. The total number of hectares is three and a half million, of which half is agricultural land, a third is forested—’

‘Do you talk this crap because you think I’m interested, or so that you stay awake?’ Molenkov yawned, and did not hold up his hand to shield his mouth. His teeth were exposed, the gaps in the upper and lower sets.

‘It’s education. Education is an important part of our lives. Even at the end we should strive to learn. I’ve read a great deal about the economy and history of the Bryansk oblast. Did you know, my friend, that a monk, his name was Peresvet, challenged and defeated the giant enemy, Chelubey, at Kulikovo? I learned that.’

‘Was it raining that day?’

‘How should I know? You should demonstrate greater respect. We’re near now to Borodino where Napoleon vanquished the Tsarist army but weakened himself so much that he failed in his march on Moscow. That was in 1812, on September the seventh, and he won only half a victory, which contributed to a whole defeat.’

‘And was it raining on September the seventh, 1812?’

‘What’s your problem, Molenkov?’

They were crossing a land of flat fields and forests. The Bryansk oblast, cut by swollen rivers, was featureless as far as Yashkin’s vision reached. A mist was brought down by the rain, not falling hard but with the blurring persistence sufficient to make every pothole a small lake. Yashkin did not dare go fast, and his speedometer showed a constant forty kilometres per hour; had he driven faster he would have risked plunging any of his tyres into a rainwater pool that had formed above a pothole and he would not have known its depth. Greater speed risked the tyres.

‘It’s like you merely recite pages from a book.’

‘I’ll ask again, what’s your problem?’

‘I have no interest in the slaying of Chelubey, or the half-victory of Napoleon in this oblast. I think, my friend, we’re embarked on a journey of greater importance than the trivia you offer me.’

‘Are you answering me? Is that your problem?’

Yashkin would not have described himself, or his friend, as a man given to sentiment or nostalgia, but as they crossed the rain-sodden roads, bisecting the flooded fields and dripping forestry, each hour he travelled and each kilometre he covered seemed to increase the risk of a soul searched and determination weakened. He imagined the questions bouncing in Molenkov’s mind. What would be its target? Who would carry it to the target? Did not know. Over all lay the question, would it work? Here, he could absolve himself. He had not the faintest idea. He was not a Kurchatov, a Khariton or a Sakharov. He was not an academician or a scientific leader of the old community of Arzamas-16. He was Major (Ret’d) Oleg Yashkin, forcibly removed, with a pension that went unpaid, driver of a taxi for drunks and addicts. He thought trivia would work well for them.

‘Will you talk about it?’ Molenkov asked of him.

‘No.’

‘You refuse to talk about it?’

‘Yes.’

‘We carry that fucking thing, and you won’t talk about it?’

Yashkin said, ‘We’ve done the talking.’

Again he heard the sigh. Had he spoken, before his dismissal, with that cutting whip in his voice to a ranking colonel, and a zampolit, he could have expected savage disciplinary sanctions, demotion, perhaps a posting to the Far East or the Arctic cold of the northern test sites at the island of Zemlya, which was close to the eightieth parallel. But the old days were dead and buried.

Molenkov asked him, ‘Do you know what day this is?’

‘No.’

‘Do you know what happened on this day?’

He knew it wasn’t the anniversary of the death of his friend’s son, Sasha, in the furnace of an armoured vehicle by the entrance of the Salang tunnel in Afghanistan, or his boy’s birthday. He knew too that it wasn’t the date on which his friend’s wife had died, or the date on which his friend had come to his office and confided his shock at seeing a physicist, a man of science who was spoken of as a director of a research zone at Arzamas-16, in a field digging for potatoes.

‘I don’t know what happened on this day — I apologize because I’m an ignorant bastard, and know very little.’

‘On this day, I ran the fifteen-hundred metres.’

‘At what level?’

‘The final of the Olympic trial. The first three were to represent the Soviet Union, go to the Seventeenth Olympiad, at Rome in Italy. Had I been in the first three, and had I gone on, to Rome, to the Olympic final, I would have competed against the great Herb Elliot who was to take the gold medal. In the trial, on this day, I achieved a personal best. I was twenty-one, and reaching the final of the Olympic trial was enough to gain my entry to State Security … I can still see it, the stadium, the crowd, us lined up and the starter with his gun held high.’

‘In the trial, friend, where did you finish?’

‘Last — where else?’

Yashkin swerved. Laughter convulsed him. He had one hand on the wheel and the other gripped his friend’s sleeve. He felt his stomach rise and his eyes were wet with tears. His friend laughed with him. Yashkin did not know how he missed a puddle as big as a lake — his view of the road and the fields was misted. His friend looped an arm round his shoulders and pulled him close. The Polonez rang with their laughter, spittle was on their lips and chins, and his chest hurt. Then they were coughing and spluttering.

Molenkov said, ‘I promise I’ll try not to talk about it.’

Yashkin said, ‘It would be good to see the trotting horses stabled in the Bryansk oblast. I believe they’re fine animals.’

The rain hammered on the tin roof of the woodsman’s home. Water leaked from the ceiling and pattered to the floor, but a steady, firmer dribble splashed on to the table where he sat. His shotgun was down from its wall hooks, broken on the table, but loaded. His dog was alongside his chair and its head rested on his lap. The only movement that Tadeuz Komiski made was to ruffle the fur below the dog’s collar. He should have been outside, in the rain, at work.

When the forestry men had cleared a rectangle of planted pines, they had taken only the best, the straightest, trunks and had sliced off the lower branches and upper sprigs. The trunks were hauled away to the depot at the village and there they were cut into lengths to be used as props in coal mines far to the south-west. They were loaded on to rail wagons that were stopped in a line beside the raised platform, then shunted on to the tracks of the main line out of the village. It was the same raised platform that had been used when he was a child … and he could not escape from the memories of those long-ago days.

The work he took for himself was to go into the forest on his ancient tractor, with his chain-saw on the trailer and his axe, and drive to one of the rectangles that had been cleared most recently for props. He had few skills and was devoid of sophistication, but could keep the tractor’s engine maintained, and the chain-saw. The tractor had been his father-in-law’s, given to him as a present in 1965 on the day he had married Maria. To have let the tractor rust, to have abandoned it, would have been the equivalent of disowning the memory of his wife, who had died from the curse with her stillborn child. It was from the tractor’s seat that he had first found the old grave where the flood rains had washed earth and compost from the body’s bones. Because of that grave, and the curse it had brought down on him, he believed himself watched.

When he went to those cleared rectangles he could find enough of the pine trunks, left by the foresters, to cut into rings and split. With a day’s work behind him, he would have a trailer-load of fresh pine logs, with the resin still sticky in them. They spat and crackled in a fire, but threw off good heat. He would drive his load away down the forest tracks, then come to the road and dart across it — because he had no licence or insurance. He would approach the village from a rutted farm path, and reach the priest’s home. There he would throw out the logs, by hand, into a loose heap, and they would be used in the church boiler, the priest’s house and in the homes of parishioners too enfeebled to gather their own wood. He would be paid, not much but something. Enough to go to the shop in the village and buy bread, milk, and sugar, if it had been a big load, and the noodles that came in plastic packets, broth for soup, and a sack of dried meal for his dog.

A man had sat in the forest with his back against a tree. A man had disturbed the dog. A man had waited silently for a sight of him … and he thought the curse revisited his life. He had gathered no wood.

His stomach growled. His own hunger he could accept, but there was only one more day’s food in the sack for the dog.

Tadeuz Komiski knew it: it would be the dog’s hunger that drove him from his home into the forest, where the curse waited for him, and there was a grave, and a man watched for him.

‘And then we have something we’ve called Haystack which is in the bailiwick of dear Christopher Lawson, who is currently up and running in Germany …’

As a junior liaison officer, she had never before attended such an august meeting. It was held once a week. Officers of the Secret Intelligence Service and the Security Service came together to brief, with a mutual minimum of detail, those of the sister organization. But her line manager, who would ordinarily have gone to such a meeting with his deputy, had that morning entered hospital for a keyhole hernia operation and would be off for four days, so she had been taken along by the deputy. The Security Service had already completed their description of current operations that had relevance to matters overseas, and the Secret Intelligence Service now listed their work that ‘might/could’ have ‘possible/probable’ implications for her people.

‘… and I understand we’ve had contact with you concerning a mafiya player, Russian, named Josef Goldmann and living in London. Don’t get me wrong, anything involving dear Christopher Lawson must be of the greatest importance to national security, and of course he has Pettigrew’s full backing, but the name “Haystack” must tell us something. You know, needles and that. My impression is that haystacks are seldom successfully searched …’

This was a colleague talking. Mistrust between VBX on the south side of the river and Thames House on the north bank was legendary. To SIS, the men and women of her Service were plodding bureaucrats who were fit for not much more than washing dishes; to her Service, SIS were arrogant pedants with a consistent but not admitted record of under-achievement. So, little of value was exchanged at the weekly sessions. They were, that week, on VBX territory — well, not actually inside that citadel of appalling architectural ugliness but in an anteroom off the building’s main lobby. The meetings were a leftover, a knee-jerk, from the catastrophe of the seven-seven explosions in the capital, when it had been convenient for both parties to blame the other for non-cooperation as an excuse for the failure to identify four suicide attackers.

‘What I can say of Haystack’s pedigree is that we’re not trumpeting this with allies and friends, and you may draw your own conclusions. Anyway, that’s Haystack, and that concludes what we have. Of much greater importance are Sapphire and Nineveh. I’m sure you’d like to take coffee with us before going back over the river.’

Operation Sapphire involved the movement of small-arms weapons from the Balkans into the UK, and Operation Nineveh followed the killing of a Manchester-reared Muslim by American troops in a gunfight in southern Baghdad. The meeting broke up. A series of thoughts flooded her. The man she had met in the tipping rain at the end of the bridge, his responses of brusque courtesy, his compliments on her briefing, and what she had asked him: Imminent danger? … Where are we on a scale of one to ten, Mr Lawson? And gazing into those eyes, seeing nothing manic in them, listening to his answer, hearing nothing blurted in it: A scale of one to ten? Probably between twelve and thirteen. She had believed him — utterly, totally. And he was rubbished by his own.

She went to the side table where a coffee percolator bubbled. She poured herself a cupful.

From behind her, ‘Haven’t seen you here before — hope you didn’t find it too crushingly dull.’

She said that, in fact, she had found it interesting and informative — and that her superior was in hospital for surgery so she had been pressed into service.

‘Good to come mob-handed, and I noticed you took a shorthand note, as we did, so there can’t be any misunderstandings on who said what and when. That’s the damn scene today, inquests and blame passing. I’m Tony, and you are?’

She said she was Alison, and that she had found the report on Haystack particularly interesting and informative.

‘Ah, the missing needle.’

She said she had ferried information on Josef Goldmann across the river, and had met Mr Lawson.

‘And what did you think of dear Christopher Lawson, the originator of Haystack?’

She shrugged, and said she was only a courier.

‘Well, Alison, you might just be one of life’s favoured fortunates. Christopher Lawson is a shit — an alpha-grade, gold-medal shit. In this building, from top to bottom, he is cordially detested. Delights in putting people down, belittling them where it hurts most, which is in front of their peers, gets some sort of perverse pleasure from serving up humiliation.’

She saw the colour rise in his cheeks when he remembered what Christopher Lawson had visited on him.

‘I was late, easy enough mistake. My first trip to Berlin — anyone could have made it. The rendezvous with an agent was for fourteen hundred hours in a café in the Moabit district. I had it in my mind that it was for four o’clock, not fourteen hundred. Of course, at four o’clock the agent had stopped waiting. He treated it, fucking Lawson did, as if I’d farted at a Palace reception, bawled me out in front of all the section, was just vicious. The next morning he presented me with a gift-wrapped package. I had to open it, everyone watching, and it was a Mickey Mouse wristwatch, and he said, “When the little hand points to Mickey’s left ear it’s fourteen hundred.” Never let me forget it. Every damn time he came into the section he’d remind me … People don’t matter to him. He uses them.’

She didn’t recognize from this the man at the end of the bridge … and she thought of the water running on the plastic sheeting protecting a photograph, and what she had said: This one’s as interesting as it gets. Jonathan Carrick … he’s a phoney … personal records … erased and replaced … what they do for policemen, those going undercover. And words just told her that had chilled her: People don’t matter to him. He uses them. Two faces bounced in her mind, the one older, features shielded from the elements by the brim of a trilby hat, and the other quiet and unremarkable, but with a determined and almost bloody-minded jut to the jaw, but with the rainwater washing little streams over it. She had wanted to please so had offered the name and detail of Jonathan Carrick.

She and her colleague were let out through Security and walked up on to the bridge. She glanced down, saw the place where photographs had been shown. She blinked, was responsible, had given the name of Jonathan Carrick … God.

He looked around him. The overhead lighting was from low-wattage bulbs, and the furniture was heavy, dark wood. The doors ahead and behind him were painted a deep brown matt. It seemed a place of shadows.

At the door, Mikhail had hugged Viktor perfunctorily. Inside the hall, his Bossman had bear-hugged Reuven Weissberg. At the entrance to the kitchen, his Bossman had kissed the cheeks of a frail elderly lady, who was dressed in black and who would have merged into the gloom but for the brilliance of her short-cropped white hair. Then he was introduced to her.

He held her hand formally, loosely, as if frightened he might hurt someone so fragile, but her response was to grip him and he thought of her fingers as bent wire lengths that were tight on his hand. She did not speak to him but looked up into his eyes. He saw great depth and could not plumb it. He thought she stripped him, and all the while she held his hand he was aware that, from behind his shoulders, his Bossman and Reuven Weissberg spoke to her in tandem. He assumed his presence was explained. Was she satisfied with what she was told? He couldn’t say, but his hand was released.

She beckoned him. He followed. She led him into a kitchen. Again, the lights were dulled. He thought it was a modern kitchen with the best work surfaces and a touch-button cooker, but an old, chipped, stained table and two scraped chairs with unravelling raffia seats competed with the smart units. On the cooker, water riffled at simmering point in dented saucepans. Carrick reckoned an old life had been inserted into a luxury modern apartment. On the table a single place was laid, but on a unit there was a pile of plates, all faded and each with broken edges. She pointed to the chair.

Carrick sat.

The woman had brought with her the baggage of her life. He understood that. The Bossman had told him, as they had crossed Berlin in the car, that she was the grandmother of Reuven Weissberg. He could see the night panorama of inner Berlin from the kitchen window. It was an apartment — he grinned to himself and nothing of it crossed his mouth — that a woman would die for and a man would kill for. But what he had seen was furniture and a kitchen that a charity shop, back home, wouldn’t have accepted. It was gear that would have gone unsold at a car-boot job. He had seen the deference with which his Bossman treated Reuven Weissberg; stood to reason that Reuven Weissberg was bigger, higher up the damn ladder, than his man.

Carrick turned.

She put four filled plates on to a tray, and there were four glasses. He thought from the cooking smells that she had prepared boiled pork, boiled potato and boiled cabbage. Carrick stood. He assumed it was right for him to carry the tray, but she waved him away. He sensed that her authority, an imperious and short-armed wave for him to stay seated, had been handed down to her grandson. She lifted the tray and shuffled out of the kitchen.

He should never have agreed to being part of it, should have thrown it back in their faces.

He saw the painting. Johnny Carrick knew nothing of art. He went into a gallery only when he escorted Esther Goldmann. He reckoned the picture had class but the frame was junk-shop stuff — it would have gone into a bin at the back of any of the galleries his Bossman’s wife patronized. The painting, though, was different. It was not that Johnny Carrick was inarticulate, or stupid, but looking at the picture that hung between a wall cabinet and the spokes for drying washing, he could not have explained its quality. Very simple. An impression of depth. The soft ochre colours of old leaves that the winter had not taken off birch trees, the darkness of pines making a canopy, the gold of rotted compost on the ground, and the trunks stretching into infinity. He pushed up from the chair, scraped its legs back on the vinyl floor, went closer to it. He gazed at the heart of it and wondered where it was, what it meant, and why it was the only thing of beauty he had seen in the apartment. There was also a photograph in a little cheap wood frame, faded and with broken lines across it as if it had been folded for a long time. It was set inside the wall cabinet, behind the glass. He had lingered on the painting, but he glanced at the monochrome photograph that would not have measured more than two inches by one. Another forest. A young woman holding a baby. She had pure white hair that showed against the darkness of the black tree trunks. She held the baby close.

He should have quit. Should have made the excuse and refused to get on the aircraft, should have walked to the Pimlico office and confessed his fear.

Fingers were on his shoulder, as sharp as bent wire. He spun, startled, a kid caught out gawping. She pointed to his chair. He sat.

Should have cut and run — maybe would.

The plate was put in front of him. Boiled meat, potatoes and cabbage steamed into his eyes. She stood in front of the painting, thin arms folded, and blocked it from his view. Her shoulder covered the photograph of a young woman with snow-white hair who held a baby.

Carrick ate. She watched him, and he could read nothing of her mind.