Vagabond (54 page)

The target stopped and looked around, but the woman who’d had the newspaper did a good job on Danny Curnow’s behalf. She and Malachy must have made eye contact, because she gave him another volley of abuse and waved the torn paper at him. It was good to have her on their side, Danny thought. Malachy Riordan went out of the station, Danny and Gaby following. It was the time when it might all go down. He could have screamed for contact from Karol Pilar but phone silence was the order of the day. The shadows had started to spread.

She said, ‘That pistol, have you ever fired one for real?’

‘No.’

‘Done plenty on the range?’

‘Yes.’

‘And me,’ she said. ‘I got good marks. Then the instructor said that any amount of practice didn’t equate to real shooting when you’re trying to kill. I wasn’t told we’d need to be armed.’

‘Of course we’re armed. It’s not a bloody cake walk up the pier.’

He thought of the young men in the landing craft on a storm-tossed morning and the bright spits of flame from the muzzles of the machine-guns, then of the cemeteries where they lay. They wouldn’t have known how they would be – brave or rigid with fear. Some would have made a name that would last after their deaths. Others would have remained anonymous on that day and in the hereafter. Officers, sergeants and the guys alongside them would have cursed a few as ‘useless bastards and cowards’. No one knew how they would be when combat came. He didn’t know, at what stage as it played out, she would take the text message from Bentinick, or how she would react, and didn’t much care.

She stared ahead. He thought now that she rivalled him and had lost respect for him.

They went out of the station, and saw Malachy Riordan’s back disappear round a bend.

‘Where is she?’

The brigadier held open the door for him. He strode in and Ralph Exton followed. He barked the question. ‘The pretty one, not you. Where is she?’

Timofey Simonov gazed around him. It was a roadhouse. He was familiar with it and trusted the owners. He always came here when he visited the old garrison area. There was a moth-eaten bear’s head on the wall, a boar’s with good tusks, and antlers from the deer that were shot in the fields. At the door, the brigadier had pointed to the table where the man sat. It was obvious that he was alone. He had a plate in front of him and an empty mug, but there was no crockery opposite, no handbag on the table and no coat hooked over a chair.

‘Where is she?’

The brigadier had said she was pretty, and his friend, Ralph Exton, had confirmed it. The man turned. Timofey saw his face.

It did not matter to him that the man peering at him was a guerrilla fighter. It had not concerned Timofey when the fighters were North African, from the deserts, or waging their armed struggle in Africa, close to the equator. This man was from Ireland. Timofey knew – as he would say – ‘sweet fuck all of nothing’ about Ireland. He had learned the phrase from Ralph Exton and gloried in it. He could justify selling weapons wherever they could be paid for – and wherever the ‘roof’ allowed it. On this occasion he had been brief with factual explanations. One Saturday afternoon three weeks ago, during an audience at the private residence of the ambassador, a message with an appropriate entry code had been shown him, fresh from cryptology in the signals unit. The detail had concerned the target living under guard in a discreetly placed villa to the south-west of London and the fee that was on offer. He had not queried the money that would be paid to him, and in accepting the contract he had slipped in a reference to a representative from the Irish campaign, a go-between, and a request for some trifles of armaments. It had been a good day to ease that matter into the communications net because, again, the British government had complained at the killing, many years before, of the traitor to the regime who had ingested Polonium 210. The British, in the view of many in the seat of power, were considered to have overstepped the limits of their impoverished influence. They were arrogant and displayed insufficient respect for the government of Russia. It was a strong face, a fighter’s. It was the face of one of those senior sergeants in the Vityaz force for special operations. It had strength and injuries.

A split in a swollen lip. Scratches on the cheeks. A bite on the left side of the chin. The man stared at him, said nothing. He had deep eyes, dark: Timofey prided himself that he could read a man by his eyes, a skill taught him at the knee of Mr Vik. The brigadier had said that the girl had stepped forward at the bank and negotiated while the man had hung back and was overruled on whether or not the money should be transferred before the purchased items were verified. He laughed. ‘Is the girl not coming? Did you exhaust her?’ Good enough English, but there was no answer. He turned to the brigadier, spoke in Russian, ‘Perhaps she didn’t like the look of him with his clothes off. Perhaps she turned him down.’

Ralph Exton stood a little behind him, but was visible from the corner of an eye. His friend was the ‘middle man’ and would take a cut from the deal. Exton should have greeted the Irish man and had not. Neither did he ask about the girl or joke at her absence. The light was failing. The Irishman gazed at Timofey’s uniform, seemed to say with his eyes that only a buffoon wore such clothing. The brigadier put money on the table. They left. The girl was not there and the man’s face had been scratched, bitten and punched. For precious minutes he had forgotten the news in the bar on the screen, and the refusal of officials at the embassy to take his call. They went out into the last of the sunlight.

The brigadier took a call, then murmured in his ear where they would meet the driver who had brought the gear. Timofey knew all of the old camp ground: he was always emotional when he came here.

The van had come. The headlights had flashed. They were loaded through the back door. Black-gloved hands shook theirs. They heard names: Alpha, Bravo and Charlie.

There was a brief hug from Karol Pilar, arms around Danny Curnow, but he made no gesture towards Gaby Davies. The van lurched forward.

Danny was told that the targets were at a café, by a garage, then had left. They drove fast at first, then slowed when the Mercedes was in sight ahead.

She must still have had the nerves because she needed to talk. ‘Finishes tonight. We’ll see him into custody with the local crowd, then brief the embassy people on extradition to Belfast. We’ll do a run to the airport, get the witness statements and file the photography in the office during the afternoon and evening. Sunday is chill-out and do the washing. What’s your week looking like, Danny? Any plans for Monday morning?’

He said he had a group coming in at the start of the new week. After an early lunch he would have them on the beach at Dunkirk, then do the cemetery. In the evening there would be a talk from the guide travelling with them. That was his Monday.

‘Is it always difficult when you come down off a big operation? Flat and low key?’

He said he felt waves of exhaustion, and that Monday was too far into any future to think about now.

‘And you don’t even have to be here.’

He didn’t argue or take offence. There was indeed no need for him to be squatting on the floor of a van driven by Czech police, their weapons alongside him, a pistol of theirs stuck into his belt. He had no more business there.

‘I would have coped,’ she emphasised. ‘I wouldn’t have needed the verbal equivalent of a rubber truncheon. You could have stayed at home, gone round the cemeteries and battlefields. Do you talk to them about heroes? The world’s left you behind, Danny. Well, Monday morning for me will be a whole new scene. I’ll be turning my back on this place and you. I might bring a picnic and sit in the gardens behind the office, then go in and find out what they’ve given me. People like Matt Bentinick feed off poor lost souls like you. They’re bloody leeches, and they’re comfortable because you’re so thankful to be asked that you’ll do as you’re told with no fuss. And you always want to come back. You were scarred, and managed to quit, but never lost the habit. You had to have a last fix. The fingers flicked and you came running. It won’t happen to me. I thought, at one stage, that I might get to like you. How wrong I was. Damn you, have you nothing to say?’

They followed the Mercedes. He didn’t give her the satisfaction of a riposte. He turned away, tapped out his text in the near darkness of the van, then hit send. He had agreed with most of what she had said. She was quiet now. He was something of a passenger, ‘along for the ride’, and she had the authority of Thames House behind her. The warrant would be in her name. Karol Pilar had the muscle of three heavily armed specialists, and an agent no longer needed handling. He could have pulled out, for all his usefulness that morning, and might have been lucky with a flight to Paris, then a fast TGV out of Gare Saint-Lazare, four stops to Caen. He might have caught the closing of the Falaise Gap and had dinner at the restaurant across from the marina where all the tours went on their last night.

‘God, Danny, did I say that?’

‘You didn’t hear me argue.’

‘I’m so sorry. I want to say—’

‘Someone said once, “Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.” Don’t apologise.’

Danny Curnow closed his eyes. The night gathered.

He sniffed. Jocelyn expected it: it was George’s style. The man wanted to talk.

‘Coffee, George?’

‘I don’t want to interrupt . . .’

‘It’s the cappuccino capsule, yes?’

He nodded, and slid into her cubicle. It was not a comfortable chair that he sank onto, but she seldom encouraged visitors and few troubled her. In the corridor she went to the machine, pressed the buttons and studied the noticeboard that had the usual clutter of Pilates sessions, salsa dancing, Farsi conversation evenings and the hockey team’s fixtures. She allowed few into her room but he had the right to be there, and she sympathised. She had been sorting the matter of the air strip and its location.

She brought the mug back and settled at her desk.

He had the right to know. If it failed he was ‘dead in the water’. He might linger briefly but then he would be out on his ear. If there was blood on foreign soil, traceable, it would be the equivalent for the dear man of having both legs amputated at the knee. Some in Thames House would be sorry to see him go, but more would regard him as dispensable. Their relationship was much dissected by juniors but without conclusions. It was likely, she thought, to be based on trust, but few in the building knew the meaning of the word, or gave a toss about it. It was mid-afternoon. She did a little grin – sparked some mischief – opened a drawer and withdrew a hip flask. It had been a present from her father who perennially regretted that she was not male and didn’t handle a Purdey well. She sloshed Scotch into his mug, then told him what was in place, what was planned, and explained the feed that linked the field position of the team to the Six station at the Prague embassy. If it succeeded, he would be toasted with fine wines, in a few remote corners of government, and praise would cascade over him. She told him what was left to be confirmed, and an approximation of a timetable, then let him talk.

He said, ‘With their influence over the Czechs, Magyars, Poles, Slovaks, Slovenians and Austrians, you’ve done well. They’re under the thumb. We’re not going to have Red Army tanks rolling up the high street, but we’ll have bloody cold winters if the Gazprom taps on the pipelines are closed off. It has to be Germany.’

She favoured a flying club near Chemnitz.

‘They’ll go ape-shit. Forgive the vulgarity. The old Soviets are back running the show. They don’t reckon the clock ever nudged forward. And we have their whistleblower’s assassin tucked into a cell, but that’s minor in comparison with what we can achieve tonight. They use our country as a lavatory, piss in our streets and think nothing of it. We’ll send a message, a discreet one, and they’ll be throwing their ghastly crockery across the banqueting halls and chipping the gold-leaf paint they love off the ceilings. It’ll let them know we’re still breathing.’

If there was ‘blood on the ground’, he would be out, and the telegrams from the foreign ministry in Prague would be deluging Foreign and Commonwealth by morning. The politicians would be queuing in disorderly lines to claim his body parts, and the Americans would be chortling at the screw-up. He’d be gone, exorcised from the Service’s history. Much was at stake.

She said, ‘There’s a fair bit riding, George, on the man we have in there – the freelance who was, and is, Vagabond. Experienced, but no spring chicken.’

‘If he’s good enough for Matthew Bentinick he’ll have to do. Matthew didn’t offer me coffee – said he was too busy. In a rather bloodythirsty mood but perky enough.’

‘We have to hope he has cause to be.’