Illegal Action (13 page)

29

T
he last message from Moscow had not come as a total surprise. It warned her that the operation might have been compromised. The British authorities could have information to endanger the plan. It was not known at this stage precisely what the British knew. A suspect was in custody in Moscow and was being questioned. More information would be forthcoming.

She needed to find out where this Jane Falconer woman lived. Asking the chauffeur was out of the question, though she had overheard him telling Brunovsky that she lived in Battersea. There was nothing under her name in directory enquiries; nothing on the electoral roll. But it had proved easy enough to follow her this evening to the Savoy. She’d met some man for drinks, then down here to Battersea, within a long stone’s throw of Albert Bridge Road.

She was sure she hadn’t been spotted on the bus and she had turned the opposite way when she got off at the same stop. She had made it back to the corner before her target had disappeared from sight into a large block of flats further down this narrow street. Though she had looked back before she went in, Jane couldn’t possibly have recognised her as the same person who’d got off the bus with her. Night was drawing in now, and she walked slowly down the pavement, ready at any moment to cross over to avoid suspicion. Outside the Victorian block, built like an armoury out of orange brick with black ironwork, she cast a casual look and registered the name—Battersea Mansions.

As she continued down the road, she wondered how to find out which was the right flat. There were probably at least two dozen in the building. She could ask another resident, but would the flat be in the name of Jane Falconer? Almost certainly not. And getting in would be risky. It would be more dangerous outside, but there seemed to be no real choice.

She was about to turn and head back when she saw a man with a blue overcoat on the far side of the street. He was standing in the shadow; he seemed nervy, peering around, turning his head from side to side, walking a few steps forward then back into the shadow, manifestly ill at ease. She kept her own head down to avoid attracting his attention and as she passed him on her side of the road, he seemed to make up his mind and he walked off quickly towards the lights of Parkgate Road.

She waited until he had reached the corner of the larger road before turning around herself. Then she noticed the beat-up Ford parked across the road. Its lights and engine were both off, but there was a man sitting behind the steering wheel. He looked as if he were dozing.

Odd. Normally, you’d sit with the lights on if you weren’t going to be there very long and were waiting to pick someone up. So why were his lights off?

She reached the end of the road and walked around the corner. She passed another parked car with its lights off. This time two people were in the car, a man and a woman behind the wheel. She wondered if they were watching the same house she was. Hard to tell—they might just be minicabs waiting for fares, or a glum couple waiting for tempers to subside after a row. But two cars? No, this was a surveillance team. But who were they watching?

She turned again and went back round the corner, torn between leaving and her curiosity about these other watchers. Then out of Battersea Mansions she saw a woman emerge, in a raincoat. It was Jane Falconer.

Time to leave the area, the woman decided, and as she walked on, the car from round the corner came past her, briefly flashing its lights as it passed the parked Ford. Her suspicions were correct, then—they had been waiting for Jane. And the man on foot, was he with them too? Then why had he gone away?

She struggled to make sense of the Chinese boxes of watchers watching watchers. If Jane was just a low-level agent, placed in Brunovsky’s household to help protect him, then what were all these other men doing here tonight? Why would they be watching Jane? It didn’t make sense, unless for some reason they thought she needed protecting.

They were right.

The message she sent later that night was unambiguous, as was the reply she received six hours later:

Permission granted.

30

H
ello, Liz. Long time no see. I hear you’re in the arms of the Prince of Darkness. Why do you get all the best jobs?”

Dave Armstrong, Liz’s old friend from Counter-Terrorism, got into the lift as it opened on the fifth floor.

“Whatever you’ve heard, it’s disinformation,” said Liz with a grin. “And as for best jobs, you know you’d run a mile rather than work with Dracula. Believe me, you’re in the best place, Dave, and I’d stick your feet firmly under the desk, if I were you. By the way, is there any news of Charles coming back?” she enquired with a casual air that did not fool Dave for a moment.

“Sorry. Nothing firm on that front yet.” He grinned. “Are you coming to drink out old Slater?”

“I’d forgotten all about it,” replied Liz, “but I’ll come along if you’re going. I’ve always had rather a soft spot for the old boy.”

Colin Slater had spent almost thirty years in MI5, rising to assistant director. Most of his time had been spent in Protective Security, and until the last few years he must have thought he was on the last leg of a peaceful voyage towards his pension. His work, though not without its challenges, had never been especially stressful.

Then, like virtually everyone else in the room tonight, he had been drawn into the post-9/11 maelstrom. Shifted, with the whole Protective Security Branch, into Counter-Terrorism, he had spent the last two years doing what so many of Liz’s colleagues spent all their waking hours doing—working to stop the unthinkable from happening. Now, at his retirement party, there was an enervated air to the man as he stood, in the bright central atrium of Thames House, wine glass in hand, accepting the congratulations and goodbyes of his colleagues. He looks more like seventy-five than sixty, thought Liz. Is that how we’ll all end up?

There were rules in Thames House about retirement parties, as about everything else. When a director retired, DG made the speech. When it was an assistant director retiring, the speech was made by the director. So it was Michael Binding, acting director of Counter-Terrorism in Charles’s absence, who called for silence and began the ritual trawl through Colin’s career. Liz found herself joined at the back of the semicircle of listeners by Geoffrey Fane. He’d already spoken to her that evening, showing no embarrassment over their awkward conversation at the Savoy. If anything, he seemed to feel it had broken through some barrier and his manner was noticeably warm.

Slater’s reply to Michael Binding’s remarks was mercifully short and Liz was just preparing to slip quietly away when she heard someone say, “Good evening, Liz.”

The voice was so low that at first she didn’t recognise it. Turning, she found Charles Wetherby just behind her. He was dressed in a tweed jacket and flannels, and looked quite different from his usual formal self. Impulsively, she kissed him on the cheek, then stood back as he smiled at her.

“You look very well,” she announced. Which was only partly true—he looked fit, with a ruddy bloom to his cheeks that must have come from lots of long walks, but his face was drawn, his eyes colour-less and tired.

“So do you, Liz. New job suiting you?” he said.

She shrugged. “It’s not what I expected.” He raised an eyebrow, and she seized the unexpected opportunity to unburden herself. Once she had started, she found she couldn’t stop, even though she knew she was going on too long. She described her odd status in the Brunovsky household and the machinations of Henry Pennington of the FCO that had put her there. She couldn’t altogether disguise her frustration, though she tried to sound light-hearted—“I never thought when I was hunting the mole last year, that I’d end up as a mole myself.”

But Charles didn’t smile at this. “I hope you’re being very careful,” he said grimly.

She was a little taken aback. “Of course,” she said. “Though I don’t feel in any danger.”

He was staring at her intently, with the fixed gaze she had come to recognise. It was the “X-ray stare,” as Dave Armstrong had labelled it. When she first worked for Charles she had found this look unnerving but over the years she had grown to understand that it was a sign of concentration, a sign that he was taking something very seriously and thinking about it.

“You’re at risk, Liz. You’re there for a reason. Brunovsky knows what you really are; for all you know others in the household know too. If this plot exists, you are very exposed if anyone suspects you.”

“It’s a big ‘if,’ Charles, but I understand.” He seemed so serious that she wanted to change the subject. But the one thing she most wanted to ask—when he would be back at work—was the one topic she didn’t feel she could bring up. Dave Armstrong had told her that Joanne Wetherby was no better.

“Good,” he said. He smiled, as if aware of his own gravity. “You said you’d keep in touch. I’m holding you to that.”

“All right, Charles,” she said.

“Feel free to ring me at home until I’m back,” he said.

As she stood in line to shake Colin Slater’s hand before leaving, she saw Charles in earnest conversation with DG, who was frowning and looking worried.

31

H
ow on earth does he afford this place? thought Liz, watching Dimitri taking a long swig from his glass of wine. They were in the library of the boutique hotel in Covent Garden where Dimitri was staying, an intimate Georgian town house where guests poured their own drinks.

Observing him, Liz thought how much he reminded her of Brunovsky. He had the same gusto, a sort of boyish quality, an innocent enjoyment of everything, though Dimitri had none of the oligarch’s manic edge. Instead, there was something sensual and appreciative about his approach to life, as if he wanted to spread his large, long arms and embrace the world.

“I was reading about our prime minister’s trip to Russia next month,” said Liz. “It said that after he’s been in Moscow he’s going to visit St. Petersburg. Apparently, his wife is keen to see the Hermitage. Did you know that?”

“Of course,” he said. “I will be escorting her myself through the Fabergé exhibits in the Winter Palace.”

“Will the prime minister be with her?”

“No, he will not,” said Dimitri.

“Too bad.”

“Not really.” He shrugged. “Have you met many politicians?”

“No,” said Liz truthfully. Bureaucrats were a different matter.

“They are all the same,” he declared. “How lovely to meet you,” he said in a mincing voice, turning and making a little bow. “I am most impressed,” he went on, giving a fatuous smile. Liz laughed, and he said in his normal voice, “They believe in nothing, those people.”

“And what do you believe in, Dimitri?” asked Liz.

“I believe in Russia,” he said, lifting his glass in a toast.

“And art?” she asked. He seemed startled momentarily, then his face broke into a broad grin. “Art, of course. But what I mean is I belong to no political party; I have no religion. I am not a democrat or a Communist. I am Russian.”

Liz smiled back, thinking about the glorious simplicity of this. What an escape it was from difficult issues. But what did it mean? Surely no one could seriously take that line in this day and age. Certainly no one with half a brain, and certainly not an art historian.

Could she imagine herself saying “I believe in England”? Well, of course she might, in certain circumstances, but would it mean any more than a sort of nostalgic attachment to places she knew—the River Nadder in summer, when the meadows were full of wild flowers in the high grass; or St. James’s Park late in autumn, when the ducks huddled together against the November cold, and men started wearing overcoats on their way to work? Or would it mean a set of values—the civility that still hung on, somehow, in a distinctly uncivil age, even here in the bustle of London; the enthusiasm and loyalty that made Dave Armstrong work all hours on counter-terrorist operations even though he might earn five times as much in the City? Was that the sort of thing Dimitri was talking about? She suspected not. In fact she was beginning to suspect that he wasn’t actually talking about anything.

“Where are you, Jane?” She looked up startled, to find Dimitri stirring from his chair. “You seem to me very far away. Let us go to supper.”

Outside it was still light, and in Covent Garden a busker stood in the piazza, strumming a guitar. A teenage boy with a painted face juggled oranges in the air, and they stopped and watched before moving towards the Strand.

“I thought since you are English and I am Russian, we could compromise,” said Dimitri as he opened the door to Joe Allen’s, a restaurant Liz knew as a theatre haunt that served American food—immense hamburgers and barbecued ribs, corn bread and Boston bean soup. Just the sort of thing she would normally avoid like the plague.

They stepped down into a noisy, brick-lined cellar. At a long mahogany bar people stood drinking, waiting for their tables, and the restaurant itself was packed. But Dimitri spoke to the greeter, and they were shown at once to a table in a far corner. It was slightly quieter here, and Liz could just about make out what Dimitri said.

“I recommend the barbecue,” he said when the waitress came to take their order.

“Very American.”

“Of course. Three days in California was like—how would you say it? A crash course.”

“That’s right,” said Liz, thinking of her own week of intensive tuition with Sonia Warschawsky. She asked Dimitri if he had seen her.

“I have,” he said. “She is very excited about the Pashko.”

“You mean the
Blue Field
?”

“Yes. She wanted to know who had bought it, because in the papers all it said was an anonymous buyer. I asked among some friends, and found that naturally enough, it had been bought by an oligarch.”

“Someone you know?” Liz asked casually.

Dimitri said, “I have met the man, but I do not know him well. He is more cultured than one might expect, so perhaps he will let people like Sonia come and see the picture.”

Liz nodded blankly, slightly disconcerted that he knew Brunovsky. The last thing she wanted was for Dimitri to find out she was spending time in the Brunovsky household.

“What about
Blue Mountain
?” she asked, moving the subject away from Brunovsky. “Could that turn up too, do you think?”

Dimitri shrugged as their waitress put down a large platter of spare ribs. He grinned wolfishly at Liz, whose grilled tuna looked positively sedate by comparison.

As he cut one of the ribs from the rack, Dimitri said, “I used to think talk of
Blue Mountain
was just another crazy conspiracy theory. But they found
Blue Field
, so who knows? It may turn up. I am told the country houses of Ireland are very beautiful, but many are decayed relics full of the webs of spiders, dusty corners with snakes and possibly lost pictures.”

“There aren’t any snakes in Ireland,” Liz interjected. “St. Patrick charmed them all away.”

Dimitri nodded appreciatively. “Ah. The power of religion. I like that story.”

Dimitri recounted a story about his friend who bought art for the oligarchs and had almost paid $10 million for what turned out to be a phoney Rothko. “I told him to take advice, and fortunately for him he did. When he buys in my own period, I help him sometimes. For the purposes of authentication. He pays me,” he added. “A little.”

Liz nodded. Perhaps this explained Dimitri’s lifestyle—the restaurants and expensive hotels.

Suddenly she heard a chirping noise like a twittering bird. It was only when Dimitri reached for his jacket pocket that she realised it was his mobile phone. “Excuse me please,” he said, and answered it. As he listened his features tautened, the happy smile of the evening gradually replaced by a frown. He spoke tersely, in Russian, and when the call had ended and he put away his phone, he looked concerned.

“Is everything all right?” asked Liz.

“No,” he said bluntly. He gestured with annoyance. “It is that friend I spoke about. He is in London and requires my help.”

“What? Now?” she said in surprise. She hadn’t been quite sure where the evening was heading, but she had not anticipated it ending like this.

“I am terribly sorry. I would ask you to come along. But my friend, he has managed to get himself into a…” He paused, searching for the word.

“A fix?”

“Yes. A fix. It would upset him if I brought someone along he does not know. Damn!” he cursed, putting one hand to his forehead.

“Don’t worry,” Liz said. “I understand.” She had done much the same thing herself on occasion, called away from dinner, even once from a concert, but never by a friend, only by her work.

Outside on Exeter Street, Dimitri offered to walk Liz to her car. “Don’t worry,” she said. “Let’s find you a taxi. Your friend needs you.”

As he opened the cab door, the Russian looked at her earnestly. “I hope I have not spoiled the evening for you. I have enjoyed it immensely.”

“Likewise,” she said.

“When will I see you again?”

“That’s up to you, Dimitri,” she said lightly. “Let me know when you’re coming to London.”

His features momentarily lost their anxious cast and he smiled broadly again. “I will make it a priority,” he said and, leaning over, kissed Liz squarely on the mouth.

What on earth was all that about? Liz thought as she walked to her car. Though she had enjoyed Dimitri’s company in Cambridge, somehow he didn’t translate to London. His little-boy enthusiasm did not quite ring true. It was almost as though he was acting, though she didn’t know why he should. Perhaps he just felt uneasy now he was on her home territory. Perhaps she was imagining it. But with her mind back in Cambridge, she remembered the odd incident in her hotel room. She had never satisfactorily explained that to herself. She suddenly thought of Charles and what he had said about risk. For the first time she felt uneasy.