Detonator (11 page)

‘Good.’

‘My dad showed me how to use a pistol. In the garden at our
dacha
. You came there. Remember?’

‘Sure I do.’ That wasn’t completely true, but I did have a vision of a high wall, woods, and a kitchen with the world’s biggest and most gleaming coffee machine. ‘Peredelkino, right?’

‘Yes. Peredelkino. We used real bullets, but we only fired them at beer cans.’

‘Rounds.’

I could almost hear the cogs whirring in his brain.

‘What do you mean,
rounds
?’

‘We don’t call them bullets. We call them rounds.’

‘Ah. R-r-rounds …’ He rolled the
r
around in his mouth like he was tasting it. ‘So my dad was shot … with r-r-rounds …’

I didn’t want to rush him back to a place he was only just starting to escape from. But, fuck it, I couldn’t keep tiptoeing around this thing. I hoped he’d be able to stay in mini-Frank mode for a moment or two longer.

‘Did you spot anyone else up on the mountain? Apart from your BG?’

He went so quiet I couldn’t even hear him breathe.

‘A guy in khaki combats, maybe? With a ring? A red ring, with a silver eagle on it? An eagle with two heads?’

Eventually he spoke again. ‘No. But I couldn’t see much from the back seat. And I was talking to my dad. About a maths problem.’

‘A maths problem?’

‘Yes. He used to set me challenges. Then something happened in front of us. With a truck, I think. A big truck. My … my BG pulled off the road … and stopped the car … and turned in his seat … and … and …’ He swallowed. ‘And that was where you found us …’

I heard him trying to suppress a sob.

Anna would have been able to say something warm and cuddly, but I wasn’t built like that. I just let him have a bit more silence to wrap himself in.

It seemed to work.

‘Why did my BG do it, Nick? My dad didn’t trust many people, but he trusted …
him
.’

‘Mate, I honestly don’t know. But I aim to find out. Starting first thing tomorrow.’

‘Where will you find out?’

‘I’ve got a couple of addresses.’

‘Can I come too?’

‘Better not. Your dad always wanted me to keep you safe. And you’ll be safer here.’

Since neither of us was doing much sleeping, I took him through the drills instead.

I did it again the next morning.

We’d keep the shutters closed; it was more secure that way, and would make the place look like it was empty.

‘You can have your bedside light on. Catch up on your Dostoevsky. Or turn on the TV – but no volume. If you think someone’s trying to gain entry, don’t mess around. Get straight out of the bathroom window and leg it. Into the hedge first, then under the fence. The gap’s plenty big enough. I did it last night. How do you get to the ERV?’

His eyes lit up. ‘Along the treeline, into the back-streets, up to the railway track. The ERV is the recycling shelter …’

This was good. I needed him to do it instinctively. I needed it to happen before he had a chance to think himself out of it.

‘Where in the recycling shelter?’

‘Behind the bottle bank. I don’t come out for anyone except you.’

‘All sorts of people will be dumping stuff there. How will you know it’s me?’

‘You’ll knock three times, then three more, then say the code word.’

‘What’s the code word?’

His face fell. He looked like I’d just marked him down on his homework.

I grinned and put my hand on his shoulder. ‘We haven’t agreed a code word. It needs to be something only you and I know.’

He gave it some serious thought.

But I didn’t have all day. ‘I tell you what: who’s the main guy in
Crime and Punishment
? You know, the student in the shit?’

‘Raskolnikov.’

‘Let’s use him, yeah?’

He nodded slowly. ‘What does ERV mean, Nick?’

‘Emergency rendezvous, mate. It’s a safe place where you and I meet that nobody else knows about.’

He was putting a brave face on it, but I could see he wasn’t convinced. He gripped my arm. ‘Why can’t I come with you?’

I eased his hand away. ‘It’s a pain in the arse, but where I’m going there are no kids allowed.’ It was the first excuse that sprang into my mind: my stepdad’s stand-by when he was going down the local.

His lip quivered. ‘How long will you be?’ He was being as brave as his dad would have expected, but I knew a part of him just wanted to curl up and hope all this was going to go away.

‘I’ll try to be back soon. Way before last light. But if I’m not, don’t worry.’

I handed him a bag of stuff I’d picked up from a nearby Spar before he woke: water, Orangina, a croissant, a ham and cheese baguette.

I pointed at the room key and told him to double-lock the door when I’d gone, flip on the bar, and not to open it to anyone except me.

‘Same three knocks, then three more, then Raskolnikov?’

‘Spot on.’

I hung the
Do Not Disturb
sign on the outside handle. Then I plucked three hairs from the back of my head, gobbed on my fingertips and pasted them at intervals across the gap between the leading edge of the door and the frame. If they’d been disturbed by the time I got back, it wouldn’t necessarily mean that someone had lifted Stefan, but it would tell me that the thing had been opened and I needed to sort my shit out before going inside.

My first stop was a pharmacy, where I found a rack of black-plastic-framed glasses with +1 magnification. They’d give me a headache if I wore them too long, but I didn’t plan to. My next was a clothes store, to buy the sort of jacket people wear when they’re paying their bank manager a visit. I saw a matching blue beret on my way to the till, but I wasn’t aiming to turn myself into a cartoon Frenchman, just to cover up my head wound. I selected a blue baseball cap instead. Not the one with the
Top Gun
logo on the front: it wasn’t going to be that kind of party.

I picked up a Moleskine pocket-size notepad with an elastic fastener from a nearby stationery store. Writing anything down when you’re on a task can really fuck things up, but I still didn’t trust myself to hang on to detail that might help me sort things out. And if it was good enough for Hemingway, it was good enough for me.

The shiniest bits of Albertville had probably been thrown up a couple of decades ago, when it hosted the Winter Olympics. Until I reached the town centre, I got the impression that it had been chucked together from a random collection of trading estates.

The Banque Privée belonged to a more elegant world, and clearly had some history. I walked past it on the other side of the street, then ran through the usual anti-pursuit routines before making an approach. Known locations are always risky, and I had to assume that Mr Lover Man and his mates knew about this one. Tucked between two upmarket cafés, it was the sort of place where you didn’t get through the entrance until the people inside had taken a really good look at you.

‘
Quoi?
’ A staccato voice addressed me in French from a highly polished brass grille beneath a security camera.

I tilted my head towards it and told whoever was listening that I was English, that I was here in connection with Mr Timis, and I needed to see Mr Laffont.

The front door was made from the same kind of glass as the rear windows of Frank’s Range Rover. One glance at my reflection was enough to tell me why they’d hesitated to invite me in. But there was a soft buzz and it opened to my push.

The foyer was a riot of beige and gold topped off with a crystal chandelier that would have made Glen Campbell a very happy bunny. There wasn’t a cashier in sight. It wasn’t the kind of set-up where you dropped by to deposit your pocket money. You either transferred it electronically or delivered it in a bulletproof attaché case handcuffed to a man mountain with wraparound sun-gigs.

A blonde in a neatly tailored suit chose to ignore the slight bleep that sounded as I walked through the metal detector housed in the inside door frame. She offered me a formal welcome and indicated that I should take a seat.

I tore the first page out of my Moleskine and scribbled the number I’d given my gnome in Zürich over the phone last night. ‘Please give this to Mr Laffont.’

She rotated on one stiletto heel and disappeared up a sweeping, deep-pile-carpeted staircase. The security cameras were as discreetly positioned as possible, but I knew Laffont would already be examining me closely on his monitor.

Blondie materialized again ten minutes later, so I’d obviously passed the first test. ‘Monsieur Laffont is expecting you.’

I didn’t ask how.

She guided me to the first-floor landing, where a pair of massive Oriental vases flanked the entrance to a suite the size of a parade ground.

Almost everything about the man who rose to greet me from behind the world’s biggest mahogany desk was grey. His hair, his immaculately trimmed moustache, his suit, the eyes that glinted behind his rimless spectacles. He offered me his hand, but I wasn’t sure I could reach it. Then I realized he was just waving me towards a nearby chair – the sort you only ever saw in palaces or museums.

He opened the proceedings once I’d put down my day sack and we’d both sat. ‘Monsieur … er …’

I had no idea which of my names Frank had given him, or whether I wanted to tell him anyway, so I just took off my glasses and told him I was a business associate of Mr Timis and needed his help.

‘Of course, Monsieur. We heard the … news … yesterday afternoon. A tragedy. His poor wife …’

I knew I was being tested. Back in the day, I would have told him to stop fucking about and tell me what I needed to know. But filling a Swiss bank vault with Mexican drug money had taught me that in their world the game was played by a different set of rules. ‘I’m pretty sure they were separated. And I don’t think she is poor. But his son is gutted.’

‘Ah … little Bogdan. He must be …’

‘Stefan.’

He gave an apologetic nod. ‘I have only one more question, if it will not offend you.’

I told him I didn’t offend easily, but I was running short of time. I chucked Frank’s passport on to the desk.

He glanced at it, but wasn’t to be deflected. ‘Would you be so good as to tell me the connection between Monsieur Timis’s country estate and your Monsieur Le Carré?’

Thank fuck he hadn’t asked me this kind of stuff yesterday. There was no way I could have dredged it up. But today I remembered my first meeting with Frank, when he’d needed me to find Stefan and kill the people who had kidnapped him.

‘Frank’s
dacha
is in a place called Peredelkino. He liked the fact that it featured in Le Carré’s novel
The Russia House
.’

At that point, Laffont treated me to something like a smile. ‘Excellent. Monsieur Timis said you would be making contact in the event of … an accident.’

‘What else did he say?’

‘That he was deeply concerned about some recent business acquisitions. He didn’t divulge the details, but was confident that the contents of his safe-deposit box would usefully add to the things he told you the night before last.’

I didn’t want to admit that I’d lost my marbles in that ‘accident’ and was still struggling to remember a single one of the key elements of Frank’s briefing. I needed him to share Frank’s confidence in me, and to give me as much help as he could. I didn’t need him to put a call through to the local nuthouse. And I wanted him to get a fucking move on.

He stood and did that James Bond trick with his cuffs, picked up a small leather wallet and motioned me towards an archway in the far corner behind his desk. It opened on to another stairwell that led down to the vault.

A steel door unsealed itself after scanning Laffont’s index fingerprint and right iris, then swung shut as we moved through it. Finally we arrived in a room that belonged in the next century, not the one before last. The lighting was as understated as the furniture.

Laffont held back a heavy crimson velvet curtain, then let it fall as we entered the land of the safe deposit. They lined all three walls, floor to ceiling. He slid two keys out of the wallet and inserted them into a box at shoulder height on the right-hand side. He turned them simultaneously, clockwise, until there was a soft click. Then he extracted the drawer and placed it with reverence on the velvet-covered table under a low-hanging light at the centre of the room.

He dipped his head and retired to the antechamber. He’d know fucking well what was in there, but maintaining the illusion of detachment obviously suited him.

I lifted the lid.

First out of the box were six passports.

Three for me, with driving licences to match. Same first name, three sets of different surnames – Saunders, Savage and Browning. Three for Stefan – now Steven – each IDing him as my son. Frank knew that, in a post-Madeleine McCann world, even the sleepiest European frontier post would react badly to any attempt to smuggle a kid across a national border. And whoever had supplied these had been busy with the Photoshop. Three slightly different hair colours and styles, one with glasses, two without.

I put them to one side.

Next up was a blueprint for a container vessel commissioned by a shipping outfit called Nettuno, based on the coast of Puglia, not far from Brindisi. I unfolded it and spread it out under the light.

The maze-like structure triggered a fragment of memory, but maybe only from some time in the past when I’d had to scrutinize the layout of a building, an aircraft or a boat before a task.

There was a set of deeds for a chateau overlooking Lake Konstanz. A chateau I’d definitely seen before. In Frank’s desk drawer. Now I knew it had been purchased by a Swiss-based holding company, which must have been part of Frank’s web of international business enterprises.

I put them next to the blueprint and tried not to get a headache as I ran my eyes over them. He’d meant them to be seen in the context of his briefing. He hadn’t intended these things to be brainteasers. But that’s exactly what they were.

There was also a wad of euros and US dollars. Frank had always believed that cash said more about you than Amex ever could.