Krysalis: Krysalis (25 page)
Now, sitting in the Audi and waiting for David to drive around the corner, Barzel regretted that hasty departure. If only he’d been able to bring some muscle … but with Krysalis on the move, no one knew where, HVA’s London Station was stretched to its limit.
He looked at his watch. Something had to go right today. The thought of having wasted twenty-four hours was too terrifying to contemplate.
Where had Lescombe got to?
His question was answered almost immediately. A Rover came around the bend, accelerating past him. Barzel started the engine and pulled out of the side road where he’d been parked. Before long his Audi had settled down a hundred yards behind David’s tailgate. Barzel tried to remember the geography. They would go through a village—St. Breward, wasn’t it?—after which came a winding lane some half a mile long. That’s where he’d take him, before he got to the next main road.
The light was fading quickly now. David had his headlights on, but for the moment Barzel contented himself with parking lights, not wanting to draw attention to himself.
Here was the village … David picked up a little speed along the straight high street, then had to slow for an awkward turn beside a pub.
Now they were in the road that Barzel remembered. David’s lights fashioned a dull yellow aurora, which preceded the silhouette of his car down a dark tunnel. He came to the start of a twisting, narrow hill and braked, careful to protect his paintwork from the sheer stone walls, thick with moss, bounding what here was little wider than a single-track lane.
By this point it was dark. Barzel glanced in his mirror. No lights visible. His gaze darted back to the front.
Now!
As the Audi overtook, David was forced to jam on his brakes. His reactions were swift, but not quite good enough: he went slamming into the offside wall. Stone shrieked against metal. Barzel left him no time in which to worry about the cost of a respray. He slammed the Audi to a halt diagonally across the lane a few yards ahead of Lescombe and opened the door.
He began to walk back toward the Rover, hand already moving to his pocket.
David wound down his window. “What do you want?”
Barzel made no reply. The Rover’s engine was still running. David suddenly engaged reverse and let off the handbrake. The car began to move backward. Barzel swore. He knew it wouldn’t be easy maneuvering the car up that hill, but he also recognized that as long as Lescombe kept his speed low he might manage it.
Then Lescombe made the mistake of revving the engine and the car jumped against the wall with another expensive-sounding crunch. He slammed on his brakes. The engine complained, telling Barzel that he’d
wrenched the shift too hard, putting the Rover into third instead of first. The car lurched forward, came within an ace of a stall.
David let out the clutch, letting his Rover slide forward out of contact with the wall. He still had his headlights on. Barzel stood in the center of their beam with his legs apart and arms outstretched, knowing Lescombe would be able to see how his arms culminated in a point. A black, stubby point, with a barrel and a sight …
The Rover’s engine coughed and died. Barzel kept the gun leveled while he came alongside. “Get out.”
“Who the hell are you to tell me to—?”
Barzel yanked open the door and reached in with both hands to haul David out by the lapels, keeping the pistol rammed against his jaw. He spun him around and hurled him against the side of the Rover.
“Do what I tell you,” Barzel rasped. “If you do anything except what I tell you to do, you will be shot. Understand?”
David, still trying to catch his breath, nodded.
“You will stand upright—
wait!
I will tell you when to move. Stand upright, place your hands on top of your head, walk toward the Audi. Do not look at me. Look straight ahead until you reach the Audi. Then stop. Got it?”
“Yes.”
“Move!”
David put his hands on top of his head and turned. “Do not look at me,” Barzel cautioned him again, his voice had risen in pitch, revealing how edgy he was.
David began to walk toward the other car. He stumbled, and Barzel knew he was afraid.
Good!
He swiveled
in such a way as to keep his target permanently within range. Ten yards to the Audi. Five yards …
“Stop. Place your hands on the lid of the trunk. Keep them well apart.”
David complied.
Barzel was about to speak again when he heard something. He swung around, looking back past the Rover. Surely his ears hadn’t deceived him? Nothing mechanical, no engine, it wasn’t a car. Yet there was something….
He hesitated. While he was still trying to work out what to do, somewhere behind the Rover a horn hooted and lights came on. Barzel, looking straight at them through the windshield of David’s car, flinched. In the next split second he thought he saw a human figure rolling to one side of the road. Then—“David!” a voice yelled. “Get down!”
Three shots shattered the night peace in quick succession. Barzel flung himself to the ground and fired at random beneath the Rover.
Hopeless! No target, into the lights … out, out,
out!
Next second Barzel had rolled to one side and was diving into his Audi. Mercifully he’d left the engine running. As his tires screeched and he disappeared around the next tight comer, his brain was already supplying him with a series of sickening truths.
Someone was “minding” Lescombe. That someone had switched off both engine and lights while still short of the Rover, coasting down to take up position in total silence. It was prescient, it was well executed, and it betrayed a degree of professional daring when pitted against an armed assailant that Barzel found very frightening.
He struggled to keep the Audi on the road, but all the
while his mind kept active. He didn’t like failure. The more people tried to stop him, the more determined to succeed he became. One thing was clear. David Lescombe couldn’t be the mere innocent cipher they’d taken him for up to now, not if MI5 went to such lengths to protect him. He was a key player.
Lescombe would have to be fixed.
19
Albert knew a great deal about butchery. He had been studying it, on and off, for years. Knives, they were the important thing: buy a good one and keep it sharp. His knife had saved him and the squadron more than once, on ops. Such delightful games their masters loved to play, drop a handful of bods into Libya, single ticket, find your own ways home, last one in’s a sissy…. “Fortnight of sun and sand, gentlemen, there’s them as would give their right hands …” Oh yes, it was a man’s life in the army. As long as you had a tempered steel blade, however, you need not starve. Albert’s Sabatier had lived with him since Oxford days, although it was much thinner than of yore. Now it resembled a bodkin rather than a kitchen knife. He kept the blade keen enough to kill, skin and chop a snake, but today
ossi buchi
were on the menu and veal required less of an edge. Albert had cultivated the same butcher for years, until he could be assured of getting meat from a calf under three months old. Later he would use the same knife to chop parsley
for the
gremolata,
which strictly speaking was against the rules, but a well-honed knife would always forgive.
He had just poured the remains of a bottle of Soave around the browned meat and was turning his attention to chicken broth for the
risotto alla Milanese
when the entry phone buzzed. He glanced up at the clock. Fox was early, no doubt a ploy designed to throw Albert off balance. Why did even the best MI5 staffers suffer from simple-mindedness?
“Visitors, Montgomery,” he murmured. “And get your filthy nose out of that carcass….”
As he went to the front door his mind was busily reviewing the pitch. This interview would be critical, he knew, and he experienced an unusual tingling in his stomach. A lot had come to ride on the Lescombe case. This morning there was an axe to grind as well as a kitchen knife.
Today Fox managed to look more than ever like an operator of risqué nightclubs. He raised his eyebrows at the sight of Albert wearing a plastic apron. “Do Lea & Perrins pay people to advertise their sauce like that?”
“You live in a fantasy world. I can see you’ve never bought an apron.”
“Never worn one, either. Did I interrupt anything?” Fox sounded arch, as if he suspected Albert might be wearing lacy underwear beneath the laminate.
“No. Come in. Wait …” Albert went back into the kitchen, where he put a lid over the dish and stuck it in the fridge.
“Entertain a lot, do you?” Fox had followed him and was watching with scarcely disguised admiration.
“No.” Albert took off his apron. “But I like food and I don’t have the necessary physical coordination to cope with a tin opener.”
They went back to the living room. “Nice place,” Fox said as he sat down. “Watercolors … nice. What’s that one?”
“It’s a Callow. John, unfortunately, not William. Nineteenth-century seascape.”
“And the one next to it?
Very
striking.”
“I did that. Hobby. I see you’re allergic to cats.”
Montgomery had entered the room, sniffed and made a beeline for Fox, who now was viewing him without enthusiasm.
“Well …”
Albert made no attempt to remove Montgomery, who had put his front paw on Fox’s trouser leg in preparation for a leap onto his unwelcoming lap. “Have you read my Cornish notes?”
Fox was wearing a two-piece suit today, but habit still sent his hands to nonexistent waistcoat points. Albert monitored the nervous tic with interest. A man who could not change his ways was a marked man. Never mind that, Fox has the power to change your life, he reminded himself. Watch your manners, Albert.
“We’ve all read them.”
“The Yanks as well, I trust?”
“Oh yes. There’s a daily copy command out.” Fox hesitated. “They’re not best pleased with our failure to recover the file,” he admitted at last.
Good, thought Albert. Progress …
“What do you make of this man Lescombe?”
“He’s well-meaning.”
“Well-meaning …” Fox gave the word some consideration. “I gather you trust him, from that. Do I? Look, would you mind if I put this cat …?”
Montgomery curled his claws into Fox’s trousers and began to purr contentedly. Dots of fat, products of the
recent frying, had settled on Albert’s spectacles. Now he tore a square of wafer-thin lens tissue from a booklet on the dresser and cleaned them, in no hurry to answer. “It’s unlikely that Lescombe’s a traitor, or involved with his wife in this,” he said at last. “She’s rotten to the core, of course. But the problem with him’s different: he can’t be trusted not to get in the way. Do put Montgomery down, if you’re worried about your suit.”
Fox lifted the cat as if he feared it might be radioactive and lowered him to the carpet. “Do you want us to clear you a path?” he asked.
“Not necessary. Yet. Anyway, it looks as though the opposition may save us the trouble.”
“Mm? Oh, the man in the Audi, you mean?”
Now we’re coming to it, Albert thought. Softly, softly.
“You made a mistake there,” Fox said, with some satisfaction. “You’re
not
in favor. I warned you, keep a low profile.”
“What was I supposed to do—let that bandit highjack Lescombe?”
“No, but shooting—”
“I fired in the air, to avoid hitting our man. The guy returned fire, then he took off. Where’s the risk?”
“The risk is that by drawing attention to Lescombe you’ll succeed in turning him into a target. We don’t want that. We want him to run and keep on running.”
“So? He’s still on two legs this morning, isn’t he?”
“All right, you were lucky. You may not be lucky a second time. We’re providing him with discreet cover from now on. Just in case.
Down,
puss.”
“Good idea. I approve. Listen, this is getting out of hand.”
“Yes, I’m sorry, I don’t really like cats….”
“The
case
is getting out of hand. I don’t have a role. A function. Use me or lose me.”
“You’re still on hold.”