The ticket collector was able to give him
the directions he needed. It was a relief to reach his final destination so
quickly because there was no one else around to ask the way at that time of
night. He moved slowly towards number twenty-three. There were no lights on in
the house. He opened the swinging gate and walked straight up the path, removed
the bunch of keys from his pocket, putting the Chubb one in the lock. Adam
pushed open the door cautiously and then closed it noiselessly behind him.
A little after twelve ten the last train
from Dover pulled into Charing Cross station. As Adam was nowhere to be seen,
Lawrence instructed his driver to take him back to Cheyne Walk. He couldn’t
understand why the agent whom he had hand-picked hadn’t reported in. When
Lawrence arrived back at the flat he put the key in his lock, hoping to find
Adam was already waiting for him.
He pushed open the swinging gate and made
his way slowly up the path in the pitch darkness. Once he reached the corner of
the house he searched for the third stone on the left. When he located the
correct stone where he always left his spare key, he pulled it up with his
fingers and felt around in the dirt. To his relief the key was still in place.
Like a burglar he pushed it into the lock quietly.
He crept into the hall and closed the door
behind him, switched on the light and began to climb the stairs. Once he had
reached the landing he switched off the hall light, turned the knob of his
bedroom door and pushed.
As he stepped in an arm circled his throat
like a whiplash and he was thrown to the ground with tremendous force. He felt
a knee pressed hard against his spine and his arm was jerked up behind his back
into a half nelson. He lay on the floor, flat on his face, hardly able to move
or even breathe. The light switch flashed on and the first thing Adam saw was
the colonel.
“Don’t kill me, Captain Scott sir, don’t
kill me,” he implored.
“I have no intention of doing so, Mr
Tomkins,” said Adam calmly. “But first, where is your esteemed employer at this
moment?”
Adam kept his knee firmly in the middle of
the colonel’s back and pressed his arm a few inches higher before the colonel
bleated out, “He went back to the Embassy once he realised the girl wasn’t
going to return to the flat.”
“Just as I planned,” said Adam, but he didn’t
lessen the pressure on the colonel’s arm as he described in vivid detail
everything that would now be expected of him.
The colonel’s face showed disbelief. “But
that will be impossible,” he said. “I mean, he’s bound to noti – Ahhh.”
The colonel felt his arm forced higher up
his back. “You could carry out the whole exercise in less than ten minutes and
he need never be any the wiser,” said Adam. “However, I feel that it’s only
fair that you should be rewarded for your effort.”
“Thank you, sir,” said the fawning colonel.
“If you succeed in delivering the one item I
require and carry out my instructions to the letter you will be given in
exchange your passport, driving licence, papers, wallet and a guarantee of no
prosecution for your past treachery. But if, on the other hand, you fail to
turn up by nine thirty tomorrow morning with the object of my desire,” said
Adam, “all those documents will be placed thirty minutes later on the desk of a
Mr Lawrence Pemberton of the FO, along with my report on your other sources of
income which you have failed to declare on your tax return.”
“You wouldn’t do that to me, would you,
Captain Scott?”
“As ten O’clock chimes,” said Adam.
“But think what would then happen to me,
Captain Scott, sir, if you carried out such a threat,” moaned the colonel.
“I have already considered that,” said Adam,
“and I have come to two conclusions.”
“And what are they, Captain Scott?”
“Spies,” continued Adam, not loosening his
grip, “at the present time seem to be getting anything from eighteen to
forty-two years at Her Majesty’s pleasure, so you might, with good behaviour,
be out before the turn of the century, just in time to collect your telegram
from the Queen.”
The colonel looked visibly impressed. “And
the other conclusion?” he blurted out.
“Oh, simply that you could inform Romanov of
my nocturnal visit and he in return would arrange for you to spend the rest of
your days in a very small dacha in a suitably undesirable suburb of Moscow.
Because, you see, my dear Tomkins, you are a very small spy. I personally am
not sure when left with such an alternative which I would view with more
horror.”
“I’ll get it for you, Captain Scott, you can
rely on me.”
“I’m sure I can, Tomkins.
Because
if you were to let Romanov into our little secret, you would be arrested within
minutes.
So at best, you could try to escape on the Aeroflot plane to
Moscow. And I’ve checked
,
there isn’t one until the
early evening.”
“I’ll bring it to you by nine thirty on the
dot, sir. You can be sure of that. But for God’s sake have yours ready to
exchange.”
“I will,” said Adam, “as well as all your
documents, Tomkins.”
Adam lifted the colonel slowly off the
ground and then shoved him towards the landing. He switched on the light and
then pushed the colonel on down the stairs until they reached the front door.
“The keys,” said Adam.
“But you’ve already got my keys, Captain
Scott, sir.”
“The car keys, you fool.”
“But it’s a hire car, sir,” said the
colonel.
“And I’m about to hire it,” said Adam.
“But how will I get myself back to London in
time, sir?”
“I have no idea, but you still have the rest
of the night to come up with something. You could even walk it by then. The
keys,” Adam repeated, jerking the colonel’s arm to shoulder-blade level.
“In my left hand pocket,” said the colonel,
almost an octave higher.
Adam put his hand into the colonel’s new
jacket and pulled out the car keys.
He opened the front door, shoved the colonel
on to the path, and then escorted him to the pavement.
“You will go and stand on the far side of
the road,” said Adam, “and you will not return to the house until I have
reached the end of the road. Do I make myself clear, Tomkins?”
“Abundantly clear, Captain Scott, sir.”
“Good,” said Adam releasing him for the
first time, “and just one more thing, Tomkins. In case you think of
double-crossing me, I have already instructed the Foreign Office to place
Romanov under surveillance and put two extra lookouts near the Soviet Embassy
with instructions to report the moment anyone suspicious turns up or leaves
before nine tomorrow morning.” Adam hoped he sounded convincing.
“Thought of everything, haven’t you, sir?”
said the colonel mournfully.
“Yes, I think so,” said Adam. “I even found
time to disconnect your phone while I was waiting for you to return.” Adam
pushed the colonel across the road before getting into the hire car. He wound
the window down. “See you at nine thirty tomorrow morning. Prompt,” he added,
as he put the Ford into first gear.
The colonel stood shivering on the far
pavement, nursing his right shoulder, as Adam drove to the end of the road. He
was still standing there when Adam took a left turn back towards the centre of
London.
For the first time since Heidi’s death, Adam
felt it was Romanov who was on the run.
“What a great honour for our little establishment,”
said Herr Bischoff, delighted to see the most important banker in the East
sitting in his boardroom sharing afternoon tea.
“Not at all, my dear Bischoff,” said
Poskonov. “After all these years the honour is entirely mine. And kind of you
to be so understanding about opening the bank on a Sunday.
But
now to business.
Did you manage to get Romanov to sign the release form?”
“Oh, yes,” said Bischoff, matter-of-factly. “He
did it without even reading the standard clauses, let alone the extra three you
asked us to put in.”
“So his inheritance automatically returns to
the Russian state?”
“That is so, Mr Poskonov, and we in return...”
“...
will
represent
us in all the currency exchange transactions we carry out in the West.”
“Thank you,” said Herr Bischoff. “And we
shall be delighted to assist you in your slightest requirement, but what
happens when Romanov returns to the bank and demands to know what has become of
his inheritance?” asked the chairman of the bank anxiously.
“He will not return,” the Russian banker
said emphatically. “You can have my word on it. Now, I would like to see what
is in those boxes.”
“Yes, of course,” said Herr Bischoff. “Will
you please accompany me?”
The two banking chairmen took the private
lift to the basement and Herr Bischoff accompanied his guest to the underground
vault.
“I will unlock the five boxes now in your
name with the bank’s key but only you can open them with your key.”
“Thank you,” said Poskonov, and left Herr
Bischoff to open the five locks and return to the entrance of the vault.
“Do take as long as you like,” said Herr
Bischoff, “but at six o’clock the great door is automatically locked until nine
o’clock tomorrow morning, and nothing less than a nuclear weapon would prise it
open. At five forty-five, an alarm goes off to warn you that you only have
fifteen minutes left.”
“Excellent,” said the man who through his
entire banking career had never been given a fifteen-minute warning of
anything.
Herr Bischoff handed Comrade Poskonov the
envelope with Romanov’s key inside it.
As soon as the massive steel door had been
swung closed behind him the Russian checked the clock on the wall. They had
left him with over two hours to sort out what could be transported to Brazil
and what would have to be left behind. A state pension and the Order of Lenin
(second class) hadn’t seemed much of an alternative to Poskonov.
He turned the key and opened the first of
the small boxes and found the deeds to lands the State had owned for decades.
He growled. The second box contained the shares of companies once brilliantly
successful, now shells in every sense of the word. And to Poskonov’s
disappointment the third of the small boxes only held a will proving everything
belonged to Romanov’s father and his immediate heirs. Had he waited all these
years to discover the stories the old man had told him of gold, jewels and
pearls were nothing but a fantasy? Or had Romanov already removed them?
Poskonov opened the first of the large boxes
and stared down at the twelve little compartments. He removed the lid of the
first one tentatively, and when he saw the array of gems and stones that shone
in front of him his legs felt weak. He put both hands into the box and let the gems
slip through his fingers like a child playing with pebbles on a beach.
The second box produced pearls and the third
gold coins and medallions that could make even an old man’s eyes sparkle. He
hadn’t realised how long it had taken him to go through the remaining boxes but
when the alarm went off he was five thousand miles away already enjoying his
new-found wealth. He glanced at the clock. He had easily enough time to get
everything back into the compartments and then he would return the following day
and remove once and for all what he had earned from fifty years of serving the
State.
When the last lid had been placed back on he
checked the clock on the wall: six minutes to six. Just enough time to glance
in the other box and see if he could expect the same again.
He turned the key and licked his lips in
anticipation as he pulled the large box out. Just a quick look, he promised
himself, as he lifted the lid. When he saw the decaying body with its grey skin
and eyes hanging in their sockets he reeled backwards from the sight and,
falling to the floor, clutched his heart.
Both bodies were discovered at nine the next
morning...
The phone rang and Adam grabbed at it before
the shrill tone could deafen him a second time.
“Your alarm call, sir,” said a girl’s voice
gently. “It’s eight o’clock.”
“Thank you,” Adam replied and replaced the
receiver. The call had proved unnecessary because he had been sitting up in bed
considering the implications of his plan for nearly an hour. Adam had finally
worked out exactly how he was going to finish Romanov.
He jumped out of bed, threw back the
curtains and stared down at the Soviet Embassy. He wondered how long the
Russian had been awake.
He returned to the side of the bed and
picked up the phone to dial the number Robin had given him. The phone rang
several times before it was answered by an elderly voice saying, “Mrs
Beresford.”
“Good morning, Mrs Beresford. My name is
Adam
Scott,
I’m a friend of Robin’s. I was just
phoning to check that she reached home safely last night.”
“Oh, yes, thank you,” said Robin’s mother. “It
was a pleasant surprise to see her before the weekend. She usually spends the
night in the flat when she gets back that late. I’m afraid she’s still asleep.
Would you like me to wake her?”