Confessor (2 page)

“I need to talk.”

“If it’s asking me to come back, forget it. For me the war is over.”

Perhaps, Worboys thought, the last remark had about it some of the old Kruger style, but even as the idea ran briefly through his head, it was snuffed out by Herbie.

“I don’t want to see any of you again. This I mean, Tony, and you know why. I’m finished with it. It’s all over.
Consummation est
. Okay?”

Worboys paused. It was both profoundly sad and depressing to see Kruger like this, a husk of his old self; a man of such former vigor dragged down, with all his energy gone and his physique taking on the form of a wraith. He was reminded of his own father at the end, riddled with cancer, his body and features unrecognizable, redrawn by disease, the body corrupted by nature.

“Sorry, Herb. Still got to talk to you. It’s bad news, I’m afraid.”

Big Herbie, now not looking big, or strong enough to swat a fly, opened his mouth to say something, then changed his mind, pulled back the door and motioned Worboys into the tiny hall of the cottage.

For a second Worboys recalled his visit to this same place some years ago when Herb and his bride, Martha—née Adler—one of Kruger’s old agents, were married. Herbie had run her in East Berlin, where she had boldly seduced, entrapped and even killed at his bidding. On that last occasion Herb the bridegroom had seemed to fill the hallway, so that he gave the impression of having to crouch and breathe in simply to open the door. Now two of him would have fitted into the space.

Predictably, the living room was untidy and smelled strongly of liquor. Worboys wondered when Herb had last opened a window. “Spot of coffee, Herb? I’ve come a long way.”

“You weren’t invited,” Kruger snapped. Then, “Coffee, okay,” his legs stuttering him off in the direction of the kitchen.

“So, what’s the bad news?” he asked on his return with two large mugs of black liquid.

“Gus.”

“What about Gus?”

“He’s dead, Herb.”

“Gus Keene dead? How so? Saw him a couple of months ago. Retired, like everyone but you. Retired and writing his memoirs. Told me so himself.”

“We think it was a car bomb. He was driving back to Warminster last night—well, early this morning. Car left the road and blew up. About half a mile from Wylye. He was coming back from Salisbury …”

“Warminster? What the hell was he doing in Warminster? He’d quit. Retired. Why Warminster?”

“We gave him the old Dower House. Him and Carole. He had the Dower House as part of the golden handshake, don’t you remember?”

Somewhere at the back of Herbie Kruger’s mind he heard a fragment from one of Mahler’s symphonies—the Adagietto from the Fifth, he thought. Beautiful, but drenched in sadness. A year ago he would have recognized it immediately without even thinking, for Mahler’s music had been his prop and pillar through all the years of his secret life. A reflection mirrored in the glass of life for him. The very idea of not now being able to place it in context made him suddenly frightened. What had he allowed himself to become?

“I remember,” he murmured. “You gave him that crummy little cottage near where was once the main entrance. After all those years that Gus served, you give him a little cottage where he can look at the place he controlled for so long. Very big of you, Tony.”

“It wasn’t me, Herbie. It was an executive decision. Anyway, he wanted to be there. It was office property and he wanted to be somewhere he could have files officially while he was writing.”

“His memoirs, sure. It’s the big thing now. You take the golden handshake and the okay to write about your years in secrecy. The coming thing. KGB does it as well, I hear.”

Worboys sipped the hot, strong coffee and wondered if this had been a wise move, coming to old Herb, laying the news on him and then suggesting what he had been told to suggest.

“What a good idea, giving him the Dower House,” Kruger continued. “Got him under your thumb, right? Got him by the short hairs while he’s writing his secret life story.”

“I told you, that’s what he wanted. He argued that it would be more secure.”

Big Herbie Kruger said nothing. For a long time Tony Worboys left him alone, for he offered not a word and seemed suddenly an old man, sitting with both hands around the mug of coffee, his eyes looking out on something that Worboys could never see.

Kruger was, in fact, thinking of Gus Keene and how impossible it was that this man should be dead. Unthinkable. People like Gus did not die. Not at his age. Herbie felt the life running silently from him to join Gus. Citizen Keene. Herbie had called him that when he last saw him. Aloud, he said, “Best Confessor the Office ever had, eh?”

“Best in the world,” Worboys agreed, but did not intrude on Herbie’s private thoughts.

A Confessor was the way some people talked about those specialists whose job it was to act as inquisitors. Interrogators, inquisitors, confessors—what’s in a name? He had even heard them called the men with the thumbscrews, but Gus Keene was certainly the best: a Confessor of Confessors. More. For years he had also been the officer in charge of what the Office called Warminster—the big old house, set in acre upon acre of grounds some six or seven miles outside the garrison town that bore its name. Warminster was, as someone else once said, the place where the Office did everything but kill people. At the thought, Herbie choked, for people
had
been known to die at Warminster, though it was used for many different things: the training of young probationers, the inquisition of suspects—sometimes highly illegal inquisitions; courses where they topped you up. He supposed they had been topping people up on Middle East targets these days, for he knew that, contrary to the modern perception, the Secret Intelligence Service had been reduced by only one hundred and twenty officers—most of them near retirement anyway—and was pursuing its old role with a new fervor.

“What’s in it for me, Tony?”

Worboys looked up, caught Herbie’s eyes and saw what he had not seen before. The glint was just visible.

“What d’you mean, Herb?”

“I’m not a fool. Why would you—a Deputy Chief—come all the way down here at sparrow fart just to tell me that our old mutual friend Gus is dead?”

“Thought it was the decent thing. I knew you were close to him. Didn’t want you to hear his name on some radio or TV news.”

“Ha!”

Worboys realized something else had been missing since he had arrived. Whatever the deal, Herbie Kruger loved to play with his English. He spoke better English than most of his old colleagues, but he had this way, this thing, with language. He loved malapropisms, deliberately using wrong words or mixing sentences. It gave him not only joy but also time. It was a behavior pattern that Big Herb used to the point of ruthlessness. But not this morning. It had gone, flown, together with the weight and sharpness.

“Anyway, young Worboys, you’re all run by committees now. Everyone knows C’s real name. Poor bugger had to move house because everyone knew. C, or one of you Deputies, has to go running to committees in the Foreign Office to get permission to break wind. That’s how I heard it.”

“C still has overall control, but yes. Yes, things
are
different.”

“A committee tell you to come and see me?”

“In a way.”

“Gus? You said a car bomb? We talking terrorists? We talking Gus as a specific target?”

“Possibly. We don’t know.”

“So who’s handling it?”

“The local Plod—well, the Plod in Salisbury.”

“Sure. The cops. What about anti-terrorist cops?”

“They’ll be in on it. Probably take over the investigation in a couple of days.”

“So, what’s in it for me?”

Slowly Worboys removed a laminated card from his pocket and placed it on the small table next to his mug of coffee.

Kruger picked it up, squinting at it as though he had trouble focusing. Then, with a sound of irritation, he flicked the card away, so that it spun through the air, hitting a wall and finally landing in the middle of the room. “I told you, Tony. I won’t come back. Never again. Through. Finished.”

“We’re not asking you to come back, Herb. If you look at the ID, it says you’re a consultant. There’s no money attached, though you’ll get all the support within reason. Peeps into the files, transport, minders even.”

“Why would I consult for you, and why
me
?”

“Because you’re one of a very few left who were close to Gus. Lord, Herb, you knew the man probably better than anyone. You were even interrogated by him. …”

“For a year, sure. For a year after my bit of trouble in what was East Germany, sure. A year in the country. A year with Gus at his cleverest.”

“But you
were
close. Knew him from other things.”

“Carole was closer. Why not use the wife?”

“Come on, man, how in hell can we use Carole?”

Kruger did not answer. Instead he went through to the kitchen and made himself another mug of coffee.

“You want me to liaise with the Plod, the anti-terrorist boys?”

“Of course. We also want you to put Gus’s life under the microscope. Read the manuscript he was writing, look at his research, go through his jacket, talk to friends outside the Office. Discover the answer to the big question.”

“Find out why someone blew him to bits? Yes, easy. There must be hundreds of people out there who had reason to turn Gus into a bonfire.” He raised his head and looked at his old colleague. “You think I’m a fit person to do this? Now you’ve seen me again, you think I’m even trustworthy anymore?”

“I can see you’re not yourself, but give it a go, Herb. Could be it’s the answer to a lot of your problems. You’ve been sitting down here brooding, building up a head of grief and anger.”

“Like an old rusty kettle, yes? Be honest, Tony. I know what life’s become for me. If it were up to you, would
you
put me on to this?”

The pause went on for thirty seconds too long.

“Yes.” Kruger laughed for the first time—his old laugh, not a pale imitation. “You wouldn’t even send me out to clean floors in a safe house, right?”

“Right, Herb. Now that I’ve seen you for myself.”

“So, it’s easy. You go back and tell them Herbie Kruger ain’t big no more. Gone to seed. Not the man for the job.”

“I can’t do that, Herb.”

“Your job at stake, Tony?”

“I’ve been instructed to deliver you.”

“Ha! Would you buy a used microdot from this man? Seriously, would you?”

“Not in your present state, Herb. No. No, I wouldn’t, but I have to. It also appears that I have to get you off the sauce and back in trim. Go and get a shower and shave. You have to meet the local Plod before eleven o’clock.”

Kruger dry-washed his face with both hands. “Tony, I can’t. I’m out of it. Haven’t got the balls for it anymore.”

“Herb, this isn’t fieldwork. All you have to do is move backwards and forwards through Gus Keene’s life and come up with a couple of suggestions. Piece of cake. Couple of weeks, that’s all. You’ve got nothing better to do, have you?”

Kruger gave a great sigh, shook his head and said that he’d take a shower and think about it.

“Give me your door key.” Worboys flashed him a smile that betokened great affection. “Got a bit of shopping to do.”

Herbie did not argue, handed him the key and went slowly up the stairs to his bathroom.

He stripped and caught sight of himself in the mirror, saw the folds of flesh hanging off his long bones and the ravage he had brought to his face. As he showered, Kruger suddenly felt the old tingle, the sensation he had known for all his adult life. As he stepped from the shower, he muttered, “Herbie’s himself again.” Paused, then added, “Well, almost.”

In Washington it was two forty-five in the morning. Walid and the girl they called Khami had flown in from the New York cell of
Intiqam
earlier that evening. Their intention was to hit one of the targets of opportunity that had been well researched for them by an intelligence group known to both
Intiqam
teams by one name,
Yussif
.

Walid, in his early forties, was probably the most distinctive man in either group: short and muscular, but with a face badly scarred from smallpox. It was a face he could not disguise, even with the mustache he grew, then shaved off, in six-month cycles.

Khami was more striking than beautiful. As with so many girls from the Middle East, her hair was black, as were her large eyes. When she wished to make a point, she would open them wide. Men often thought they could drown in the pools of her eyes. More than one had drowned in his own blood while held hypnotically by her gaze.

They booked into the Willard Hotel as man and wife because the latest information told them that the station chief of Italian foreign intelligence, who had diplomatic cover in D.C., spent most weekends at the Willard in the company of his American girlfriend. It was well known among diplomats, and even the switchboard operators at the Italian Embassy on Fuller Street had a room number for him, with a code word to establish bona fides should he be required to return to the Embassy.

About the same time that Herbie Kruger was showering in England, Khami called the Italian’s room and gave the code word,
Dividersi
. Then, in faultless Italian, she told him the Ambassador required him at the Embassy as quickly as possible.

As soon as Khami put down the telephone, Walid took the elevator to the sixth floor. The Italian was only two doors from the bank of elevators serving the street end of the guest rooms.

When the Italian emerged quietly, Walid shot him three times in the face with a Walther P4, which has a long noise suppressor permanently attached to the muzzle. Walid wore gloves and the weapon was untraceable, so he simply dropped it next to the body, stepped back into the elevator and, within three minutes, was back in the room with Khami.

Like the other three women, she knew that part of their work would be both seduction and sexually servicing the men of the network. She probably enjoyed this side of her duties more than any other, and this was obvious to the police who interrogated everyone in the hotel following the discovery of the Italian’s body. They crossed the pair off as even possible killers, for their eyes and demeanor shone with physical lust. Another couple in from New York to see the sights and make the most of the nights, they thought.