Authors: Kevin Wignall
Chapter Eighteen
P
er drove them to Luleå the following afternoon and they flew back to Stockholm. Patrick wasn’t flying in until early the following morning, so Dan thought Inger might suggest getting together for dinner, but instead she gave him the address of a café and suggested meeting the following afternoon to brief each other on developments.
So he spent the night alone in the hotel on Skeppsholmen, almost as quiet and removed from the world as the cabin they’d been sharing the last few days. The hotel itself wasn’t one he’d have chosen if it hadn’t been for the location, so he went to bed early and spent an hour listening to the wind blowing the leaves from the trees, and the faint sounds of the very few cars that came onto the island.
He woke once in the night, knocked into high alert by a noise nearby, probably only a door closing in the corridor. He could still hear the breeze working through the branches outside, but nothing else of the city beyond. And as he lay, slowly yielding to sleep again, he thought of Inger, somewhere else in the city, sleeping in her own bed, a million miles away from him.
The next day was clear and sunny but there was a stiff breeze now, chopping up the water in the harbor, a cold bite to it. Seeing the island in the daylight, he realized he’d been here before. The hotel and the few other buildings had been part of some historic garrison, so the whole island had that leafy campus quality he’d often seen in military installations. Most of those leaves now lay thick on the ground and more skittered and whipped through the air on the wind.
He crossed over to the mainland and left a message for Patrick White in the reception at the Grand Hotel, telling him simply to cross the bridge to Skeppsholmen at eleven. The location was perfect in that sense, in that it allowed him to make sure Patrick was on his own and not being followed.
He went back, spent an hour in the modern art museum, then got into position with a decent view over the long bridge to the island. Despite the cold there were a fair number of people strolling across it, but he saw Patrick from some distance away.
Once Dan had spotted him, he let him go again, focusing instead on all the other people on the bridge. He wasn’t expecting to see someone tailing Patrick in an obvious way, and he knew that the overweight guy leaning looking out over the water was just as likely to be part of a surveillance operation as anyone else.
But these guys usually gave themselves away in some other fashion, in much the same way that actors always seemed to find it impossible to play “real” people. There were tells, things that Dan could spot, sometimes without even being able to define it. So he was fairly confident, so far at least, that no one was following Patrick White.
Once he’d crossed the bridge, Patrick kept walking casually, as if he were heading somewhere specific but at no great speed. Dan shadowed him for a little while longer and finally caught up with him.
Patrick didn’t turn at the sound of approaching footsteps, but just before Dan reached him, he said, “It’s a little brisk, this morning, isn’t it?”
“Brisk? I suppose so.”
As Dan drew level, Patrick said, “Charlie killed Jack Carlton and Rob Foster, wounded Alex Robinson.”
“I don’t know Robinson.” He didn’t want to know him, either, figuring he was the coward who’d made a run for it. And he had to hand it to Charlie, he’d been insistent that he’d hit him and it turned out he had.
“I don’t know him well, but he seems to be marked for greatness.” He was certainly marked for survival, which Dan guessed was half the battle. After a pause, Patrick said, “He said Charlie had other people at his place, that he and the others were ambushed.”
Dan gave Patrick a look, as if to ask if he was really that gullible, and said, “I liked Jack Carlton, I like him even more now that he’s not trying to kill me, so I don’t want you to infer that he or Foster fell short in any way that night, but there was no ambush and there was only one other person. Robinson wouldn’t have known that because he abandoned his team without even trying to help. If he hadn’t, they’d have had the edge on us because Foster came close on his own. Charlie took a bullet.”
“Serious?”
“Messed his hand up, but probably not too bad. I hope not, anyway, because the bullet was meant for me.”
Patrick nodded and said, “You might have told me all this at Café Florence.”
“I might.”
“Yes, I understand why you didn’t. But either way, Brabham’s used Robinson’s report as justification for upping the game.”
“I’m sure he has.” There was nothing more to add. From the point of view of Dan and Charlie, it couldn’t get much higher than having targets on their backs. He pointed ahead, and said, “Let’s turn here. We’ll take a ferry ride.”
“You seem to know the place pretty well.”
“Yeah, I spent a couple of weeks here some years back, researching a job for you—which my local escort asked me about, by the way.”
“Did she? You tell her what happened?”
“Of course.”
“She take it alright?”
“I think so.” Patrick nodded and they walked in silence for a few paces before Dan said, “Who was Jack Redford?”
“Redford?” He sounded surprised, not as if he didn’t recognize the name but as if he was struggling to work out the connection, perhaps thinking it related in some way to the Habibi case. “Redford. Where to begin? I never met him, very few people did, but he did a lot of work for us, a long time back. Ex-Special Forces, but he became a phenomenal one-man tiger team, usually testing the security of our own facilities, which is why very few people ever got to meet him. Sometimes he’d do other kinds of work . . .” He laughed. “Essentially stealing things for us from places we couldn’t get to, breaking into secure facilities to plant surveillance equipment, that kind of thing. He was something else. One of a kind.”
They’d reached the landing point and a little white ferry was slowly working its way across the harbor towards them. Dan looked around as they stood there, but there was no one else about.
“What happened to him?”
“Dead. He had a place in Paris. About fifteen years ago he went missing, and maybe two weeks later they found his body floating in the Seine.”
“Murdered?”
“There were all kinds of rumors at the time. One was that he’d been asked to infiltrate the DGSE headquarters in Paris for us, that he’d been caught, that the French killed him. The French denied there’d been a break-in, understandably, and if we sanctioned an operation like that, I never met anyone who knew about it. I was in Moscow at the time.”
“And Bill Brabham was in Paris.”
Patrick looked at him in response, intrigued, but neither of them said any more for the time being because the ferry was maneuvering into position. Once they were on the deck and it pulled away again, Patrick looked at Dan, his expression alone inviting him to explain.
Dan nodded, looking out across the harbor as he said, “I don’t know whose body they fished out of the Seine, but it wasn’t Jack Redford’s and someone must have known that.” As an aside he added, “What happened to the body?”
Patrick shrugged and said, “He didn’t have any family. I don’t know what they did with it.”
“Just as well. Because the real Jack Redford changed his name to Jacques Fillon and moved to northern Sweden, where a few weeks ago he died in a bus crash.”
For a good few seconds, Patrick stared at him in complete silence, the ferry rocking over the choppy water, the wind buffeting them. But although Patrick wasn’t speaking, he was obviously thinking, and the pieces were falling together quickly.
“So the DGSE story could be true, or at least, he did some kind of job for Brabham, realized he was in danger. That’s why Brabham sent someone up there.”
“I don’t know if he was working for Brabham or if Brabham was the subject. But we discovered that Redford’s been working for the last twelve years to find evidence that would bring down Brabham, and his family. It seems he believed Bill was responsible for something, and I’m guessing he was right—the guy who went up there obviously went to see if there was any evidence.”
“But there wasn’t?”
“No. What we did get were some leads. It might help if you can get me some of the details for the people on this list.”
He handed a piece of paper over which Patrick studied before putting it in his inside pocket, quickly pulling his overcoat back around him.
“The parents of a Sabine Merel in Limoges. Brabham’s home and office. It all seems very eclectic.”
“It is, and I don’t even know how much of it’ll be useful. See, around the same time that Redford went missing, an art student living in Paris was murdered. Her name was Sabine Merel, and we’re working on the assumption that Redford believed Bill Brabham to be responsible for her death.”
Patrick nodded, deep in thought, assimilating everything he’d heard. What was most striking to Dan, though, was his response to hearing what should have been an outlandish suggestion, that the CIA’s Paris station chief might have been involved in the murder of an innocent nineteen-year-old student. Patrick knew Bill Brabham, had known him for years, and he hadn’t objected to the theory. Far from it—he hadn’t even seemed surprised.
Chapter Nineteen
By the time the ferry was heading back to Skeppsholmen, Dan could feel the cold getting through to his bones and Patrick was stamping about and bracing himself in a good-natured way, as if the cold were something that had to be endured for sport.
They were still some way off the island when Dan thought he spotted a guy in a padded jacket and a beanie hat, watching them from the path that ran around the shore. It could have just been someone watching the ferry, but something about him had caught Dan’s attention.
And at the same time, as if being aware that he’d been spotted himself, the guy turned and walked away. Somehow, the speed with which he disappeared from view also suggested more intent than Dan might have expected from a sightseer. Patrick didn’t appear to have noticed anything, though that didn’t mean he hadn’t.
As the ferry made its final approach, Patrick said, “So what’s next?”
“Help out with some of those details if you can. And if there’s anyone from the DGSE who you think might be able to help . . .”
Patrick frowned, but said, “There might be one person from around that time. He’s a former Legionnaire, so I might be able to use Benoit Claudel’s murder to make him play ball.”
“Good,” said Dan, liking the way he was thinking. “I aim to prove a link, and if I can get evidence, all the better. You staying in Europe for the time being?”
“I’ll be around.” He thought for a second and said, “How did you get along with Inger Bengtsson?”
“Okay. She’s smart, focused. Apart from the fact I’m not her type, what’s not to like?”
Patrick laughed, but then looked distracted for a moment before saying, “So you wouldn’t mind her remaining involved in some way?” Dan looked askance, wanting to know what this was about. “The complexities of alliances and old friends, favors. The Swedes feel they have a stake in this. I can’t really deny them that—they’ve been very helpful—but if you can live with Inger being your point of contact . . .”
Dan found himself oddly attracted to the idea, certainly more than the guy who’d met him at Arlanda, whose name he’d already forgotten, but he was acutely conscious that there was a lot more going on here than a benign investigation into the obsessions of Jack Redford.
“I could live with her being involved but, Patrick, this isn’t a collegiate thing, it’s not collaborative. I have things to do and my own timetable to work to, and if I think at any point I’m heading over to the dark side, I won’t want to be around anyone legitimate.”
“I should hope not. The aim is to build bridges, not cause diplomatic incidents.” The ferry jolted as they docked with a churning of water. They stepped ashore and Patrick said, “The guy watching the ferry from the shore, I presume you saw him.”
“One of yours?” Patrick shook his head and Dan said, “I’ll be fine. You walk on ahead—let’s find out who he’s following.”
Patrick shook Dan’s hand and walked off along the path. Dan held back for thirty seconds, then set off after him. They’d only walked a couple of hundred yards when Patrick stopped, seemed to admire a building off to his right, and sauntered towards it, into a more quiet area of an already quiet island.
Dan slowed a little more and immediately saw why Patrick had taken the diversion. The guy who’d watched them from the shore ran across the leaf-strewn road, as if he feared losing his target. So he was there for Patrick, and Patrick had headed into the quieter corners specifically to draw him out.
Dan picked up his own pace now. He looked around, making sure there was no one else on the street, no one watching him. He took his gun and attached the silencer, turned one corner just as the guy disappeared ahead of him, turned the second just as he was leveling his own gun at Patrick’s back. Patrick was either oblivious as to how imminent the danger was or had an absurd amount of faith in Dan’s abilities.
All the same, Dan didn’t wait. He fired, hitting the guy in the back of the right shoulder. The guy grunted with the impact, span and fell, his gun clattering to the floor. Patrick turned, as if surprised by the noise more than anything. And even down and hurt, the guy scrabbled to get hold of his gun again.
To his own astonishment, Dan recognized him, and wasn’t sure how he hadn’t identified him earlier.
“Matty?” All familiarity aside, Dan kept the gun on him. Matty froze, then glanced up at Dan with a look of awkward despair. As if suddenly too hot, he pulled the beanie hat off, his fair hair left tousled and unkempt.
Patrick was back with them now and appeared genuinely hurt as he looked down at the prone man and said, “Mattias?”
Matty shook his head, pushing himself up and back against the wall nearest him. He looked embarrassed, shamed even, and above all, resigned to what would happen now.
Patrick bent down and picked up Matty’s gun, looking at it with a keen professional eye. He still looked shocked and upset, maybe with good reason, given the amount of work he’d given Mattias Hellström over the years.
Dan looked around, making sure no one had been attracted by the shot, which already silenced, had probably been distorted further in the windy conditions. He looked at Matty then.
“You weren’t following me?”
“I didn’t even realize it was you on the ferry. I was sent after Patrick.” He glanced up at Patrick and said, “Sorry.”
“Bill Brabham?”
“I didn’t like it, but I know what’s going on and, you know, he made clear how much safer it was to be on the inside. I didn’t allow for Dan.”
“Jesus, Matty, he was spinning you a line. You kill Patrick, I guarantee you’re dead in a week. Brabham’s getting rid of all of us. There is no inside, not anymore.” He heard someone laugh somewhere nearby, perhaps from inside one of the buildings. He looked at Matty then—the dark quilted jacket was covering up the injury pretty well. “We’ve got to get you off the street.”
“You’re not gonna kill me?” Dan felt a brief surge of anger, for all the jobs they’d worked together in the past, scrapes they’d been in, trusting each other completely. He stepped forward and cracked Matty on the head with his gun. “Ow. Fuck!”
“I should kill you for what you just did. Patrick should kill you.”
Matty looked back to Patrick, and said, “I’m sorry, man.”
“So am I, Mattias. It’ll be a long time before I can trust you again after this.”
Dan pulled him up to his feet, and said, “You owe me for this, Matty. Can you walk?” He nodded. “Get patched up, get off the grid.” He looked at Patrick too, as if to reinforce that the latter advice probably applied equally to him now.
It was Patrick who answered, saying, “Dan, you go on your way. I’ll call us a cab—he can’t go to a regular hospital.”
Matty, looking groggy now, said, “I can go to . . .”
“No,” said Patrick, cutting him off. “Not this time. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it.”
And with that, Patrick handed the gun back to him. Matty looked at it sitting there in his hand, its return somehow encapsulating the scope of his betrayal, and he started to sob then, quietly, as Dan turned and walked away.