Firewall (8 page)

Of course I did. My eyes were fixed on his. I considered telling him that if he was lying to me, I'd find him and kill him, but it would have been a bit like telling Genghis Khan to watch himself.

He smiled. He'd read my mind again. "Don't worry, you will see that I am a man of my word." He turned and walked toward the station.

I watched him crunch along in the snow, breath trailing behind him.

After about a dozen or so paces he stopped and turned. "Nick, a request. Please do not bring a cell phone or pager with you to Kensington, or any other electronic device. It's not the way we conduct business. Again, I thank you. I promise that you won't regret any of this."

I made sure that he was out of the way, then got back into the car.

7

Norfolk ENGLAND Friday, December 10,1999 The bedside clock burst into wake-up mode dead on seven, sounding more like a burglar alarm. As I rolled over it took me three attempts before I managed to hit the off button with my hand still inside the sleeping bag.

The instant I poked my head out I could tell the boiler had stopped working again. My house was a bit warmer than a Finnish snow hole, but not much. It was yet another thing I needed to straighten out, along with some bedding and a bed frame to go with the mattress I was lying on.

I slept in a pair of Ronhill running bottoms and sweatshirt. This wasn't the first time the boiler had broken down. I wrapped the unzipped bag around me and pushed my feet into my sneakers with the heels squashed down.

I headed downstairs, the bag dragging along the floor. I'd spent most of my life being wet, cold, and hungry for a living, so I hated doing it on my own time. This was the first place I'd ever owned, and in winter the mornings felt much the same to me as waking up in the brush in South Armagh. It wasn't supposed to work like that.

The place was in the same state as I'd left it before I went away just over two weeks ago, to RV with Sergei at the lake house, except that the tarp had blown off the hole in the roof, and the "For Sale" sign had been flattened by the wind. If it had stayed there any longer it would have taken root anyway. There wasn't enough time to sort any of that out today. I had three vitally important meetings in London in a few hours' time, and they wouldn't wait for the boiler man.

The trip back to the U.K. had taken three days. I'd decided to find my own way rather than take Val's advice to get out of Finland via Estonia. It wasn't as if we were sharing toothbrushes or anything, so I wasn't in the mood to trust everything he had to say. I drove to Kristians and in southern Norway, and from there I took the ferry to Newcastle. It was full of Norwegian students. While they got loaded I watched Sky News on the snowy screens. There was footage of the Intercontinental, with police apparently doing a search for forensic evidence, then came pictures of the dead, among them Sergei. A Finnish government spokeswoman gave a news conference, declaring that it was the worst incident of its type their country had witnessed since the 1950s, but declining to confirm whether it was a ROC shooting, and stressing there was no connection with, or risk to, the EU conference.

As far as they were concerned, this was an unrelated matter. I made my way down the bare wooden staircase, trying not to snag the sleeping bag on the gripper tack strip that had been left behind when I'd ripped up the carpet.

The house was a disaster zone. It had been ever since I'd bought it after bringing Kelly back from the States in '97. In theory it was idyllic, up on the Norfolk coast in the middle of nowhere. There was a small corner store, and three fishing boats worked out of the tiny harbor. The highlight of the day was when the local senior citizens took the free bus to the super store eight miles away to do their big shop.

The real estate agent must have rubbed his hands when he saw me coming.

A 1930s, three-bed roomed mess of stone, just six hundred feet from the windy beach, it had been empty for several years after the previous owners had died, probably of hypothermia. The details said, "Some renovation required, but with magnificent potential." In other words, a shit load of work was needed. My plan was to gut the place and rebuild it. The ripping out was okay; in fact, I'd enjoyed it. But after a succession of builders had sucked through their teeth when giving me their quotes, and I'd gotten pissed off with them and decided to do it myself, I'd lost interest. So now the house was all bare boards, studwork, and entrails of wiring that I didn't understand sticking out of the walls.

Now that I was responsible for Kelly, it had seemed the right time to fulfill the fantasy of having a real home. But no sooner had I exchanged contracts than it had started to make me feel confined.

I'd called the place in Hampstead, where she was being looked after, as soon as I'd got back last night. They said she was much the same as when I'd last seen her. I was glad she was sleeping; it meant I didn't have to speak to her. I did want to, but just never knew what the fuck to say. I'd gone to see her the day before leaving for Finland. She'd seemed all right, not crying or anything, just quiet and strangely helpless.

The kitchen was in just as bad a state as the rest of the place. I'd kept the old, yellow Formica counter, circa 1962. They'd do for now.

I put the kettle on the burner, readjusting the sleeping bag around my shoulders, and went out into the porch to check for mail. It hadn't been stacked up on the kitchen counter as I'd expected. I also wondered why the tarp hadn't been replaced in my absence.

I hadn't got a mailbox yet, but a blue trash can did just as well.

Very Finnish, I thought. There were four envelopes-three bills and a card. The handwriting told me who the card was from, and I knew before I read it that I was about to get fucked off.

Caroline had started coming here to look in on things now and again, to collect the mail and check the walls hadn't collapsed while I was away working as a traveling salesman. She was in her thirties and lived in the village. Her husband no longer lived with her-it seemed he took too much whiskey with his soda. Things were going great between us; she was kind and attractive, and whenever I was here we would link up for an afternoon or two. But a couple of months earlier she had started to want more of a relationship than I felt able to offer.

I opened the card. I was right: no more visits or mail collection. It was a shame; I liked her a lot, but it was probably for the best.

Things were getting complicated. A gunshot wound in the stomach, a reconstructed earlobe, and dog-tooth scars along a forearm are hard to explain, whatever you're trying to sell.

Making a lumpy coffee with powdered milk, I went upstairs to Kelly's room. I hesitated before I opened the door, and it wasn't because of the hole in the roof tiles. There were things in there that I'd done for her-not as much as I'd have liked, but they had a habit of reminding me how our lives should have been.

I turned the handle. There had probably been more wind than rain in my absence, as the stain on the ceiling wasn't wet. The blue two-man tent in the middle of the floor was still holding out. I'd put nails in the floorboards instead of tent pegs and they were rusty now, but I still couldn't bring myself to take it down.

On the mantel were two photos in cheap wooden picture frames, which I'd promised to bring down to her on my next visit. One was of her with her family-her parents Kev, Marsha; and her sister Aida-all smiles around a smoking barbecue. It was taken about a month before I'd found them hosed down in their home in the spring of '97. I bet she missed this picture; it was the only decent one she had.

The other was of Josh and his kids. This was a recent one, as Josh was carrying a face scar that any neo-Nazi would be proud of. It was of the family standing outside the Special Operations Training Section of the American Secret Service at Laurel, Maryland. Josh's dark-pink gunshot wound ran all the way up the right-hand side of his cheek to his ear, like a clown's smile. I hadn't had any contact with him since my stupidity got his face rearranged in June '98.

He and I still administered what was left of Kelly's trust fund, though as her legal guardian, I'd found myself shouldering more and more of the financial responsibility. Josh was aware of her problem, but it was just done via letters now. He was the last real friend I had, and I hoped that maybe one day he would forgive me for nearly getting him and his kids killed. It was too early to go in and apologize-at least that was what I told myself. But I had woken up late at night more than once, knowing the real reason: I just couldn't face all that sorrow and guilt stuff at the same time. I wanted to, I just wasn't any good at it.

As I picked up Kelly's photos, I realized why I didn't have any myself.

They just made me think about the people in them.

I cut away from all that, promising myself that reestablishing contact with Josh would be one of the first things I got done next year.

I went into the bathroom opposite, and ran the buttercup-colored bath.

I had a bit of a soft spot for the foam tiles, now light brown with age, that lined the ceiling. I remembered my stepdad putting some up when I was a kid. "These'll keep the heat in," he'd said, then his hand slipped and his thumb left a dent. Every Sunday night, when I had a bath, I threw the soap at the ceiling to add to the pattern.

Returning to my bedroom, I put Kelly's photos on the mattress to make sure I didn't forget them. I finished my coffee, then dug into one of the cardboard boxes, looking for my leather pants.

I checked the bath and it was time to jump in, after hitting the small radio on the floor, which was permanently tuned to Radio 4. The shooting was still high on the agenda. An "expert" on ROC declared to listeners of the morning program that it had all the hallmarks of an inter faction shooting. He went on to say that he had known this was going to happen and, of course, he knew the group responsible. He could not, however, name them. He had their trust. The interviewer sounded as unimpressed as I was.

I lay in the bath and glanced at Baby G. Another ten minutes and I had to get moving.

The order of the day was first, the doctor's office at 11:30 to talk about Kelly's progress, then lie to the clinic's accounts department about why I couldn't pay the new invoice just yet. I didn't think they would completely understand if I told them everything would have been fine if a mad Russian called Carpenter hadn't fucked up my cash flow.

My next visit would be to Colonel Lynn at the Firm. I wasn't looking forward to that conversation, either. I hated having to plead.

The third stop on my agenda was Apartment 3A Palace Gardens in Kensington. What the hell, I was desperate. I didn't see the Maliskia solving my financial problems.

My foray into the freelance market had only reinforced my reluctant dependence on the Firm. I had been weapons-free from the Firm since the fuckup in Washington with Josh eighteen months before. Lynn was right, of course, when he'd said I should feel lucky that I wasn't locked up in some American jail. As for the Brits, I reckoned they were still trying to decide what to do with me give me a knighthood or make me disappear. At least I was getting paid two grand a month in cash while they scratched their heads. It was enough to cover Kelly's treatment for about seventy-two hours.

Lynn made it clear that in no way did the retainer mean any change in my status; he didn't say it in so many words, but I knew from the look in his eyes that I was still lowlife, a K spy, a deniable operator carrying out shit jobs that no one else wanted to do. Nothing would change unless I could get Lynn to put my name forward for permanent cadre, and time was running out. He was taking early retirement to his mushroom farm in Wales when he finished running the desk in February. I didn't have a clue who was taking over. Contacting the message service last night, I'd heard Lynn would see me at 1:30.

If I ever got back into the boys' club, pay would be increased to 290 pounds a day for ops, 190 pounds for training, but in the meantime I was in the shit. The chances of selling this house were zero; it was in a worse state than when I'd moved in. I'd bought it for cash, but I couldn't get a loan against it because I couldn't prove my income.

Since leaving the army it had been cash in envelopes, rather than a regular paycheck.

Getting out of the warm bath into the cold bathroom, I dried myself quickly and got into my leathers.

From inside the paneling that contained the cistern I retrieved my 9mm HK Universal Self-Loading Pistol (Heckler & Koch universal self-loading pistol), a chunky, square-edged semiautomatic 9mm, and two thirteen-round mags. Its holster was my usual one, which could be shoved down the front of my jeans or leathers.

Sitting on the toilet lid, I bit open the plastic bag protecting it and loaded the loose rounds. I always eased the mag's springs when the weapon wasn't needed. Most stoppages occur because of a misfeed from the magazine, either because the mag's not fully home in the pistol grip or because the mag spring has been under tension for so long that it doesn't do its job when required. When the first round is fired it might not push the next up into the breech.

I loaded the weapon, inserting a mag into the pistol grip and ensured it was fully home. To make the weapon ready, I pulled back on the top slide with my forefinger and thumb and let go. The working parts moved forward under their own steam and rammed the top round of the mag into the chamber. I had three Universal Self Loading Pistols in the house, two hidden downstairs when I was here, and one under my bed-a little trick I'd learned from Kelly's dad years ago.

I checked chamber by pushing back slightly on the top slide and put the weapon and spare mag in my pocket, slung the backpack over my shoulder and locked up the house.

Waiting for me outside was the bike of my dreams, a red Ducati 966 that I'd treated myself to at the same time as the house. It lived in the garage, another stone marvel of 1930s architecture, and there were times when I reckoned the sound of its engine bursting into life was the only thing that kept me from total despair.