Authors: Jeremy Duns
With this in mind, he’d roamed the check-in area at Arlanda looking for someone he could impersonate on arrival in Brussels, but there had simply been no suitable candidates. He had
searched again on the flight, walking up and down the aisle, but he had struck lucky with Jonas and the bar had now been raised for how much he had to resemble his mark. Because if he had been
detected, the men hunting him would be furious that he’d given them the slip and the customs officials would have been given instructions to be even more rigorous. He had decided he
didn’t fancy his chances trying the same trick again.
Dark sat beneath the plane and listened until the last passenger had come off and the stewardess had walked back up the staircase. He opened his eyes and saw the doors of the bus close and then
head off.
He took a deep breath. He could hear the low chatter of the crew above him, perhaps discussing their plans for a night in the city. He’d gone out with a BOAC stewardess for a few months
once and had spent many an evening waiting for her in airport bars: he doubted the drill she’d described would have changed much in the intervening years. They’d be cleaning the aisles
and packing up their gear now, and would be coming down the staircase themselves in a few minutes. The pilot and co-pilot had less to do but usually waited until the crew were finished so they
could all leave as a group. Not always, though.
He stepped out of the shadow and walked across the tarmac towards a parked Sabena jet in the next bay. He’d spotted a small flickering glow beneath one of the wings that he thought he
recognised. As he drew near, he saw that he’d guessed right: a member of the airline’s ground crew was seated cross-legged on the rear of his service truck, smoking a cigarette.
He was alone.
Dark marched up. ‘What the hell are you doing?’ he called out to him in French, his voice terse and authoritative. ‘You should be working.’
The man stood and arched his shoulders back, peering into the darkness. Dark stepped forward and punched him in the solar plexus, thrusting his fist hard into the flesh. The man doubled over,
winded, and Dark followed through with a knife-hand strike to the vagus nerve behind the ear. The man slumped to the ground like a puppet with its strings cut. Once Dark had checked he was
unconscious, he removed the cigarette from his fingers and crushed it beneath his shoe. Now the darkness was near-absolute. He quickly began stripping off his clothes.
Five minutes later, dressed in the man’s yellow and blue overall, he parked the truck in the Sabena bay outside a low boxy building adjacent to the terminal. He descended and followed a
group of men wearing Alitalia insignia who were heading towards the building. One of the men held the door open for him, and he nodded his thanks. He walked into the baggage handling area, busy
with men unloading cases. He found one of the carousels that was deserted and, glancing around, stepped over it, then ducked and crawled through the plastic curtains. A small boy clutching a
balloon was staring at him. Dark smiled at him and stood, wiping the dust off his knees, then headed purposefully into the body of the arrivals hall.
Soldiers were patrolling here, as they had been in Stockholm, but none of them paid him any attention. Dark located the
bureau de change
and exchanged his kronor for francs, then took
the escalator down to the railway station and bought a ticket into the centre of Brussels.
A quarter of an hour later he walked out of the Gare du Nord and was greeted by a throng of taxi drivers wanting his business. One of the men, burly with wild grey hair, caught his eye, and he
nodded at him. The man gestured obscenely at his disappointed colleagues and then opened the passenger door of the cab with a flourish.
‘On y va, m’sieur!’
Dark climbed in. The car stank of cigarettes and the driver’s body odour.
‘Rue de Stassart soixante-quatre, s’il vous plaît.’
The man nodded and roared off, forcing Dark’s spine into the back of the seat.
He had a hollow feeling in his stomach, only partly caused by the man’s driving. He was hoping Manning lived at the address directory enquiries had given him, but if he didn’t
he’d just wasted several hours flying out here and he’d be no closer to finding out who had taken Claire and Ben, or where they were now. Somewhere in the world, men with guns were
holding them both. How were they dealing with it? Had they been hurt? Did Ben understand, was he scared . . . ?
The city flashed by in a succession of tunnels and intersections and sparks flashing on tramlines. He saw a billboard reading ‘MAES PILS’, and remembered steins of cool beer in a
darkened bar. He licked his lips unconsciously.
The driver took a turn and Dark had a sudden intuition he was being duped – that it was a deliberate detour to increase the fare. He leaned over and glared at the man.
‘Qu’est-ce que vous faites?’
His nails were digging into the palms of his hands, and he realised his nerves were drawn so taut that even a delay of a few seconds might
make him snap. Perhaps sensing this, the driver sped up.
‘Ne vous inquiétez pas, m’sieur,’
he said, raising his palms fractionally on the wheel.
‘Nous sommes presque là.’
They came into the African neighbourhood. Dark wound down his window to get some air and the smells of grilled fish and plantain drifted in from a nearby restaurant. The taxi slowed for the
lights and a young woman in a bright green dress came to the crossing. Time stilled.
Claire.
He was reaching for the handle of the door and was about to tell the driver to stop the car
when she turned and stared straight at him and he realised his error.
She crossed the road, and he leaned back against the leather seat. Cold sweat licked his forehead, and his heart was thumping.
Pull yourself together, man.
The driver veered into Rue de Stassart. It was a narrow street, a mix of shabby nineteenth-century houses and concrete office blocks: it looked like someone had taken all the ugliest parts of
Paris through the ages and smashed them together while wearing a blindfold. They passed a group of young Africans dressed up for a night on the town – Dark registered the insistent thump of
music from further down the street – and then he saw number 64: a massive and monstrous red-brick house that occupied an entire corner, with a four-floor turret uniting both sides like the
spine of a book.
‘Juste ici, s’il vous plaît.’
He paid and climbed out, gulping air. The taxi sped off and he walked up to the house and peered at the list of occupants next to the door. One of the placeholders read ‘M
ANNING
, G.
– A
FRICA
T
RUTH
’. Dark pushed the button beneath it and stepped back.
A couple of minutes later the door opened and a neck craned out, watery eyes peering from a crumpled face. He looked like a frightened turtle. Dark pushed at the door and stepped into the
stairwell.
‘Hello, Geoffrey,’ he said. ‘I’ve come to pick your brains.’
Cherneyev and Proshin were the first two passengers off the plane. They were both tired and irritable, but Proshin knew he was lucky to have been given this option at all
– he could have been sent in disgrace to the provincial office in Kuibyshev, thrown into a cell in the Lubyanka or worse. And he had no doubt what the ‘consequences’ Ivashutin had
mentioned would be if he failed now: the firing squad.
Despite the unpleasantness in the lift in Moscow, Cherneyev had recognised the impossibility of travelling in his fatigues and had told Proshin to take him to his office. ‘It’s not
Savile Row, is it?’ he had sneered when Proshin had shown him the brown cotton suit he kept in his wardrobe, but he had put it on nevertheless. It was two sizes too baggy for his muscular
frame, but he was passable.
They now made their way through customs without any difficulties, and were greeted on the other side by a young man in a leather jacket and jeans holding a sign bearing their assumed names. This
was Yuri Diadov, the communications man for the GRU’s illegal
rezidentura
in the city. After establishing identities with the phrases they’d been given, they followed him out
to where he’d parked his car.
Diadov got behind the wheel and the other two climbed into the back. Once they’d all squeezed in, Diadov reached under his seat and took out a parcel, which he passed wordlessly to Proshin
behind him before starting up the engine. As they came through a tunnel, Proshin unwrapped the oil-cloth and found two Browning Hi-Powers nestled against each other. Cherneyev put out a hand, and
Proshin dutifully handed one of the guns to him. Cherneyev examined it in the glow of the streetlamps, checking the magazine and inspecting it for markings – there were none.
‘Where did you get these from?’
‘A personal contact.’
Diadov glanced in the rear-view mirror and noted the wintry expression on Cherneyev’s face. He recognised the type: he was what was known euphemistically as an ‘executive
agent’, a special forces operative trained to hunt and kill the enemy, and to follow orders unthinkingly and to the letter. The other man was an officer, a flabby functionary rather than a
killing machine, but he was perhaps more dangerous, as he would be watching his every move and then reporting back to headquarters. He decided a little more information might be advisable.
‘One of our agents bought them from a Belgian who assists the mercenary community here,’ he said. ‘We’ve used him before and he’s always been reliable and efficient.
To our knowledge, the authorities here have no records of him or these weapons.’
Cherneyev gave a curt nod. ‘I hope your evaluation of that is accurate, as it’s we who will pay if it isn’t. What about INDEPENDENT? Have you established where he’s
headed?’
Diadov showed no surprise that the younger man appeared to be in command even though the signal he’d received had indicated that the older one would be. ‘I made some enquiries, but I
hope you can appreciate that I haven’t had a lot of time. However, I did manage to discover that a man broadly matching INDEPENDENT’s description took the train into the city about an
hour and a half ago.’
‘How broadly?’
‘Same height, weight and general appearance, but no beard and he had fair hair. He’s dressed in some kind of uniform, perhaps airport ground crew.’
‘How many stops are on that train?’
‘Just two – the northern and central stations.’
Cherneyev exhaled, making a noise somewhere between a sniff and a grunt. As he’d suspected the moment he had seen the man, he was an incompetent novice. How did these people get posted
into the field? Perhaps, like Proshin, he’d landed the job through family connections.
‘“Just two”,’ Cherneyev repeated, his voice laden with sarcasm. ‘That’s one too many, Diadov, because he could have got off at either of them and we
don’t know which. In fact, he could be anywhere by now. He could be in Antwerp, or Ghent, or got off the train and taken another straight back to the airport and caught a plane somewhere
else.’ He slammed his fist into the headrest of the empty seat in front of him, shaking the car for a moment.
Diadov stiffened. ‘My instructions were to arm you, drive you into the city and go home. No more than that.’
He took the turning onto the motorway and the three men fell silent, each of them resenting the others for different reasons.
The flat had once been rather a grand affair: the ceilings were high, the floor was parquet and there was a marble fireplace in the living room. But the glory years were long
gone now. The paint was flaking from the walls and the frames of the windows, and a smell of mould hung over everything.
Manning had done his best to liven the place up with the décor, which had a somewhat contrived African theme: garish paintings featuring zebras, toucans and flame trees and a few
fierce-looking tribal masks hung from the living-room walls. In one corner was a teak bookcase and next to it a small desk, on which rested a typewriter, piles of paper and an open bottle of
Johnnie Walker. Behind that were two battleship-grey filing cabinets and a rickety chair in which a pyjama-clad Manning was now seated on Dark’s instructions. Funny, thought Dark, he had been
wearing pyjamas the first time he had met him, too. Perhaps it was the same pair. The bags under his eyes were more pronounced, but otherwise he looked much the same as he had when Dark had last
seen him, six years ago in a clinic overlooking a courtyard in eastern Nigeria.
‘How’s Marjorie?’ Dark said. ‘This place doesn’t really look like her style.’
Manning’s jaw hardened. ‘She left me, as I’m sure you know.’
Dark hadn’t, but he wasn’t surprised. He had forgotten all about Geoffrey Manning until he’d happened to catch the end of a programme on P1 one Sunday morning and had been
astonished to hear his plummy tones emerging from the transistor. The programme had naturally made no mention of his time in the Service, referring to him simply as a ‘former British
diplomat’, but that confirmation of his identity had alone been enough to make Dark’s jaw drop. The Colonel Blimp who had laughed along with the good old boys in the Lagos Yacht Club
had apparently had the most unlikely of Damascene conversions, as well as reserves of political nous and organisational efficiency Dark would never have suspected of him in a million years.
Sitting at his kitchen table, Dark had stared at his radio set in wonder as Manning had explained to his earnest Swedish interviewer how he had gradually become disillusioned by the British
government’s role in Africa and had resigned from the ‘Foreign Office’ in protest as a result. In 1970, he had moved to London and taken up with Biafran activists there, but he
hadn’t lasted long – Dark presumed the Service had told him to clear out or they’d find a way to charge him under the Official Secrets Act. He had then moved to Johannesburg and
become involved in the anti-apartheid movement, but the South African authorities had been about as welcoming as the British so he’d upped sticks for Paris, where he had worked for
Amnesty’s press office. In 1972, he had left to set up his own organisation, Africa Truth, which campaigned ‘to end racist colonial rule in the continent’. It did this by
publishing a newsletter of the same name, petitioning governments and mounting publicity stunts: ambushing delegates with photographs of massacred children at a conference in London, protests
outside embassies, marches and sit-ins. Manning and his small team were forbidden from entering any of the countries they wrote about, but relied on insider sources, mostly liberal whites.