Red Notice (7 page)

Laszlo climbed the stairs to the tiny room above the shop. He boiled the kettle and made himself some black tea. Rejecting the Mr Men yoghurts, he ate some bread and cheese from the fridge, then turned on the television and tuned it to a news channel. He settled on the cheap vinyl sofa, brushing aside the kapok stuffing that spilled from one of its seams.

The lead item on the bulletin focused on the mysterious explosions that had rocked a Victorian mansion at the edge of Hampstead Heath. A police spokesman, reading from his notes in the Robocop-speak that police media-training courses had apparently been unable to eliminate, said that there had been no terrorist incident: a gas leak was thought to have been the cause of the blasts. As a precaution, the neighbouring houses had been evacuated. But the media weren’t buying it. Their aerial cameras showed the police cordon that had taken just minutes to get into position, and they broadcast eye witness reports of men dressed, as one middle-aged woman put it, ‘like those SAS chaps’.

A slow smile spread across Laszlo’s face.

A succession of would-be customers tried the shop door and went away again. One particularly persistent one kept banging on the glass. The letterbox gave a metallic rattle. ‘I know you’re in there,’ an irate male voice yelled. ‘I can see the TV through
the upstairs window. I’ve got an important event tonight and I need my dinner jacket.’

At first Laszlo ignored him. As the banging grew louder, he moved quietly to the head of the stairs and waited. There was more furious shouting and banging on the door but then he heard retreating footsteps, the slam of a car door and a squeal of tyres.

Laszlo walked back into the room and switched off the TV. He selected a SIM card from several he had in his jacket pocket, put it into his mobile phone and made a call. He spoke in Russian to his little brother. There was affection in his voice, something no one but Sambor had heard since the deaths of their mother and father. They exchanged pleasantries before getting down to business.

‘I have been compromised.’ Laszlo brushed aside Sambor’s concern. ‘It is not a problem, brother. I am OK. We have to move the plan forward. We start tomorrow morning.’

Laszlo listened as his brother confirmed that everyone was now in place, and fully prepared. Sambor thanked him for keeping his promise.

After breaking the connection Laszlo took out the SIM card, cut it into four pieces with the kitchen scissors and flushed it down the toilet. Then he swung his legs up on the sofa, closed his eyes and settled down to wait.

17

DELPHINE HAD PUT
her hair in a loose ponytail and worn a tunic dress in jade green silk for her first date with Tom.

‘You look absolutely stunning,’ Moira had said, as she stood in front of the mirror, checking her own hair. ‘But might you not be a little . . . over-dressed? You don’t know where he’s taking you, do you?’ They both heard the throaty sound of a motorbike engine outside. ‘Or how you’re going to get there . . .’

Delphine went to answer the door, and found Tom wearing his usual jeans, T-shirt and leather jacket.

‘You look fantastic,’ he said, then sheepishly held out a motorcycle helmet to her. ‘Er, did I forget to mention I’d be picking you up on my bike?’

‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I get motion sickness in cars.’

Tom wasn’t sure if she was just trying to be nice. He drank up every detail of her happy, smiling face.

‘And I used to ride a moped all the time in Nice.’

‘Um . . . I’m afraid Hereford isn’t the South of France.’

She flashed him a dazzling smile. ‘That’s true in so many more ways than you can imagine.’

‘You’re not wrong,’ he said. ‘But right now I’m just worried about the temperature.’

‘Shall I change?’

He shook his head. ‘Wear my jacket over your dress. I’ll be fine in my T-shirt – it’s a warm night, by Hereford standards anyway.’

She slid onto the pillion seat of Tom’s new BMW GS1200, leaned into his back and put her arms around him as he twisted the throttle, gunned the engine and pulled out of the car park. As he accelerated, weaving the bike through the sparse evening traffic, she clung tightly to him, feeling the hard muscle of his body against her arms and chest.

He took her to a gastro-pub in Fownhope, a village a few minutes outside town. The knowing look the waiter gave him as he showed them to a corner table suggested to Delphine that she wasn’t the first girl he’d taken there.

She’d expected him to dominate the conversation, spinning yarns of countries he’d seen and battles he’d fought. After all, wasn’t that what soldiers did? But she was wrong. As they talked over dinner, she was surprised to find that he was attentive and interested in her, asking her a string of questions about herself and her life before she’d come to Hereford.

After a while she began to wonder if it reflected genuine interest in her or was more a tactic to stop her asking him too much about his own life.

‘You’re not very forthcoming about yourself, are you, Tom?’

‘I guess it’s the way all of us are,’ he said. ‘Everything we do at work is on a need-to-know basis – if you don’t need to know, then you don’t get told.’

Delphine smiled. ‘I wasn’t planning to torture you and I don’t want to know any state secrets. I’m just interested in you. But if you don’t want to tell me, or you’re too shy . . . though I’d find that hard to believe . . .’

Tom’s discomfort was already showing. Delphine momentarily glimpsed the little boy hiding inside the man. ‘I thought resistance to interrogation was something you had to learn for work, not for when you’re out with a friend.’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Just a friend?’

‘For the moment, yes. Later on, well . . . who knows? But
what’s that English phrase? Let’s not run before we can walk?’

She’d been determined not to sleep with him that first time. Not because of any old-fashioned morality – she wasn’t saving herself for her wedding night – she just didn’t want to be another notch on a regimental bedpost. But at the end of the evening it had seemed the most natural thing in the world to go back to his house with him. It wasn’t even discussed: they both knew that was the way it was going to be.

That had been eighteen months ago and they’d been going out together ever since, though she was sometimes uncertain if she knew him any better now than she had on that first date.

After they’d been seeing each other for about four months, Tom had called her at work. ‘I have to go to my parents’ house at the weekend. It’s their wedding anniversary. You can come too, if you like.’

‘You don’t sound very keen on either the idea of the anniversary or of me coming with you,’ she’d said.

‘No, I really want you to. If I sound uncertain, I guess it’s just because I’m not sure how much you’ll enjoy it.’

‘Well,’ she had said, with a smile in her voice, ‘it will satisfy my curiosity at least.’

18

‘
WELL, NOW YOU’VE
met my parents, do you want to call the whole thing off?’ Tom had joked, as they shared a pot of coffee in Delphine’s flat the morning after they’d got back. It was almost the first chance they’d had to talk. A motorbike ride is never a good time to have a conversation, and by the time they’d reached Hereford it was two in the morning.

‘They weren’t so bad,’ she said. ‘Like all parents, I’m sure they just want the best for you.’

‘Perhaps, but aren’t I the best judge of what that is?’

‘They do have a bit of a point. If you could have your pick of careers or live the life of a country gent, why be a soldier – even an SAS one?’

‘How many times do I have to say this? I
like
it.’

She nodded over her mug and held out a hand. ‘And if it costs you your life one day?’

‘It’ll still have been worth it. You know the old saying, “Better to live a day on your feet than a lifetime on your knees”?’

She inclined her head, realizing that she had a mistress to compete with. ‘I’ve never heard you speak with such intensity about anything before.’

He gave a rueful smile. ‘Maybe it’s because you’ve never asked before.’

‘Oh, I’ve asked,’ she said. ‘It’s just that you’ve never heard me.’

‘Don’t get me wrong,’ he said. ‘I’m not planning to be Lawrence of Arabia for ever. I’ve seen too many grizzled old sweats droning on about how things were different – and better – back in the day, and how the youth of today doesn’t know what soldiering is. The moment I stop enjoying it and start enduring it, I’ll quit. There are plenty of other things I want to do with my life, but for now there’s no place I’d rather be, and no job I’d rather be doing.’

‘And if the price of that is that you wind up in a wheelchair, like some of your friends?’

He shrugged. ‘I don’t treat that risk lightly. But I know it can’t be eliminated altogether. Shit happens, and I know that there’s a chance it may happen to me. It’s the price of admission, if you like, to what we do. But it’s not going to stop me. I volunteered. No one forced me to do this job.’

‘And what about the normal, everyday things in life – buying a home, raising a family, cooking the dinner, cutting the grass – where do they fit in?’

‘At the moment they don’t. But that will change one day,’ he added hastily, as he saw her lips tighten and a bleak look in her eye. ‘I want children, one day, lots of them – but I want to be around for them. I’ve seen too many mates get married, have kids, then find themselves divorced a few years later because their wives got sick of trying to run a family on their own. I’ve even heard a few women say they prefer it when their men are away on ops because they’re just a nuisance when they’re at home, disrupting everyone’s routine. Well, that’s not going to happen to me.’ He paused. ‘Or my wife.’

‘OK,’ she said. ‘I can accept that you’re a soldier and you love your work, and that your mates are as close to you as your family, or maybe even closer, but does everything have to be quite so macho? This is the twenty-first century, not the Stone Age. Does any display of affection or tenderness, any interest
in life outside the SAS really have to be taken as a sign of weakness? And would the world end if just once you said, “Sorry, I can’t make it,” when your friends or your precious Regiment asked you to do something?’

‘You and the Regiment are the two most important things in my life, Delphine,’ Tom said. ‘You know I love you, really I do, and I hope that we’ll have a life together long after I’ve left Hereford, but please don’t ask me right now to choose between you and the work I do.’

‘Because I wouldn’t like the choice you’d make?’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘No,’ Delphine said. ‘You didn’t have to.’

They sat in silence for a while. ‘Anyway,’ he said brightly, putting down his mug on the nearest pile of hotel trade mags, ‘the trial by ordeal with my parents is over, and we don’t have to go back there any time soon.’

‘I wouldn’t mind,’ she said. ‘I’d go if you wanted to.’

‘Well,’ he gave a sly smile, ‘perhaps we will in a few months, if we’re still together by then.’

‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘I could probably be doing a lot better for myself.’

He gave her a quizzical look, then broke into a broad grin.

At the end of her six-month posting at the Green Dragon, Delphine had applied for an extension, and done so again six months later, even though it was against the wishes and advice of her boss. He couldn’t understand why she didn’t want to move on, after all her hard work.

In the end he’d extracted a promise that this would be her last six months, which was now almost up. But tonight, when Tom arrived, there was a more pressing situation she was desperate to discuss. Her future with Tom or, rather, the lack of it. The mistress had won. So much so that, for the last few weeks, every time she had tried to do so, something had cropped up at the Lines: Tom had been called in for a briefing, for training, a deployment, an operation, but often, she suspected, just to go out yet again with the lads.

But that was all history. She’d seen the news on TV. The speculation that the SAS had been involved in the mysterious explosions in Hampstead earlier in the day was probably right. Tom was heading back to Hereford and should be with her soon – maybe. She’d booked a table for dinner at the pub in Fownhope. She’d asked for the same table as they’d had on the night of their first date, even asked for a bottle of the same wine to be on the table waiting for him.

19

TOM AND GAVIN
had just turned off the M4 at Swindon. It would be another hour and a half before they got back to Hereford.

Gavin sighed, fidgeted some more, then took his feet down from the dash. ‘Mate, do me a fucking favour. Let me bung some proper music on for a change. That racket’s doin’ me head in.’ He reached across to switch the radio to a rock station.

‘Racket?’ Tom shook his head in mock disbelief. ‘That’s Lang Lang playing Stravinsky’s
Rite of Spring
. I thought it was your favourite.’

‘Never heard of them. Any relation to the Ting Tings?’ Gavin gave a sly smile. ‘I’m guessing they’re French. You have romantic evenings by the fire listening to them, yeah?’

Tom grinned. ‘Where do I begin? You’re about a third to a half right, which is probably about as good as it ever gets with you, isn’t it? Stravinsky was a Russian, though he did live in France for a long time, and Lang Lang is Chinese.’

‘Yeah, yeah, yah, yah, yada fucking yada. Whoever they fucking are, and wherever they fucking come from, it all sounds the fucking same to me.’

‘Gav, you’d give Philistines a bad name, you would. I even bought you the CD last year, remember?’

‘Yeah, I know, and thank you. It makes a great beer mat. Barry White’s all you need to knock the birds bandy.’

Tom reached across and switched the radio back to Stravinsky. ‘Get used to it, mate. My roof, my rules. You’re living with me now. And if you ever manage to find someone stupid enough to marry you again, I intend to make sure they’ll be getting a cultured man.’ He shot him a sideways glance. ‘Trust me, she’ll love you for it. Now relax, listen and learn.’