Tundra (11 page)

The apprehension tightened in Lenilko’s gut. He waited.

‘There’s a journalist at the station.’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘John Farmer.’

‘Correct.’

Rokva said: ‘He’s not to be harmed.’

The silence hung between the two men.

‘Sir?’ Lenilko didn’t know what he’d been expecting, but it wasn’t this.

‘Your asset there. The Englishman, Wyatt. You need to tell him to hold off on the journalist.’

Lenilko struggled for an appropriate response. ‘Sir, I’ve given Wyatt no instructions to harm –’

‘You know what I mean.’ The director’s voice was patient. ‘If this Farmer was thought to have information relevant to the investigation, Wyatt would use whatever means necessary to make him divulge it. I’m telling you to order him to keep away. There’s to be no coercion of the journalist.’

‘But if the interests of the State –’

‘
No
coercion.’ The softening in Rokva’s tone was a dangerous sign. ‘Do I make myself clear?’

‘Perfectly, sir.’ The annoyance flared again, and, feeling reckless, Lenilko went on: ‘Might I ask who John Farmer is?’

‘Yes, you well might. And in other circumstances, I’d tell you that was privileged information, need-to-know only, and you’d have to accept that.’ Rokva shrugged. ‘But in this case you’re owed an explanation. Farmer was in Tallinn at the time of the attempt on the President’s life, using the identity Martin Hughes. This you already know.’

How did he know I knew?
Before Lenilko had time to reflect on it, Rokva went on.

‘Farmer, or Hughes, is former MI6. His real name is John Purkiss. He’s the man who brought down the Black Hawk. He prevented the assassination of our President.’

Lenilko sat very still. Inwardly, he reeled.

‘Very few people know this. Me, the other directors. The President himself. And now you.’

After a few seconds Rovka gave a short laugh. ‘Your face... An officer of your experience shouldn’t be surprised by anything any longer, Semyon Vladimirovich.’

‘Sir, I –’

Rovka continued as if Lenilko hadn’t spoken. ‘The British leaked Purkiss’s identity to us soon after the attack. Their logic was admirable. They knew we wouldn’t publicly admit that the life of our President had been saved by a British agent. The political embarrassment would have been enormous. But they made it clear that we owed them a favour. It’s a favour they have yet to call in. At minimum, though, we can’t allow Purkiss to come to grief at the hands of one of our assets.’

‘Director Rokva. May I speak freely?’

Rokva waved a hand.

‘This man is a foreign agent operating on Russian soil. He cannot simply have
carte blanche
–’

‘The matter’s not open to negotiation. Purkiss is untouchable. And he will remain so until Britain declares war on us, or until we come up with a bargaining chip to trump theirs. I rather hope the second circumstance will prevail.’

Rokva rose, Lenilko following suit.

‘Something else?’ asked the director.

‘Do you know the nature of the operation I’m conducting at Yarkovsky Station, sir?’

‘Yes. Broadly.’

‘Then you’ll know it involves a great deal of uncertainty. I don’t yet know who the targets are, or what their agenda is. This man Purkiss may possess crucial information.’

Rokva, half a head shorter than Lenilko, seemed to tower over him. His voice barely above a murmur, he said: ‘I have made my orders clear. There is a fine line, Semyon Vladimirovich, between assertiveness and insubordination. I trust I won’t have to repeat myself.’

‘Understood, sir.’

Forcing himself to keep his breathing under control, Lenilko emerged from the office. The two men who’d escorted him upstairs were waiting, and he allowed them to walk him through the lobby and towards the elevators. When the doors opened, he said over his shoulder, his voice as neutral but as authoritative as he could fashion it: ‘I’ll make my own way from here.’

Alone in the elevator, he let his self-control slip, permitted his face to contract in a grimace of fury.

He had to call Wyatt. Had to break the rule, and initiate the contact, thereby potentially putting Wyatt at risk of discovery, because who knew who else would be in the room with him when the phone rang? Lenilko had to call him, right now, because if he didn’t and Wyatt happened to take action against Farmer -
Purkiss
- Lenilko’s career would be over. As would the future wellbeing of Natalya and the twins.

Olga...
He remembered with a twist of pain that he’d been on his way home to see her when Rokva’s men had accosted him. Lenilko looked at his watch. Five forty. If he continued downwards, reaching the ground floor and heading out the doors, he could be home by six. Half an hour with Olga, listening to her account of the ballet exam, showering her with praise and affection, and then he’d be back in the office by seven.

The elevator stopped elegantly. The digital indicator above the doors read: fourth floor. The doors opened.

Lenilko hesitated a second.

He stepped out.

T
hey crowded into the room, one after the other.

Budian joined them next, followed by Montrose and Clement. Montrose turned immediately and tried to usher Clement back. Budian’s hands came up over her face, her eyes wide between her fingers, her glasses shoved askew.

Medievsky moved in front, approaching Keys’s body. He stopped a few feet away, peering at it from all angles.

Purkiss glanced round. Avner, who’d discovered the body, hadn’t returned. There was no sign of Wyatt.

Medievsky turned. He closed his eyes, once, drew breath.

‘Everybody out.’ He made shooing motions with his hands. Nobody moved. Beyond Montrose, Purkiss saw Clement staring at the corpse, her gaze flicking to the faces of the others.

The metal smell in the room, heated by the presence of so many living beings, was becoming overpowering. Purkiss spread his arms, began shepherding them towards the door. Budian complied, backing away, and Montrose and Clement exited into the corridor.

Purkiss closed the door gently. It left him and Haglund and Medievsky.

And the violated thing on the bed.

Dodging Medievsky, Purkiss strode to the body and thumbed its half-closed eyelids open. He peered at the neck, pushed the pyjama sleeves up the arms and examined the exposed flesh.

Medievsky was at his side in an instant. ‘What are you doing?’

Purkiss ignored him and bent his head close to Keys’s waxen face. He studied the lips and the visible tip of the tongue.

‘Hey.’
Medievsky’s hands were on his arm. ‘Back off.’

Purkiss allowed himself to be drawn away. He glanced round the room. Nothing appeared to be out of place on the shelves, and the monitoring equipment was stacked against one wall in the orderly fashion it had been in when he’d visited the infirmary the night before.

To Haglund, Medievsky said: ‘Find Wyatt. Tell him what’s happened.’

Haglund looked across at Purkiss. Again Medievsky said, ‘Hey,’ and jabbed his finger at the door. As Haglund was leaving, Medievsky added: ‘Bring me a phone.’

The echo of the door ebbed into silence.

Purkiss said, ‘What did you mean by that?’

Medievsky was pacing, with the air of a man determined to maintain control both of himself and of the situation yet at a loss to assimilate what he was facing. It was a few seconds before he registered what Purkiss had said.

‘What?’

‘You said I knew this was going to happen. What did you mean?’

Medievsky came over to Purkiss, stood a few feet in front of him. He wasn’t close enough to be invading Purkiss’s personal space, but his manner was intimidating nonetheless.

‘You interviewed him last night, before Gunnar cut his hand. What did you ask Keys? What did he say to you?’

‘Nothing you wouldn’t expect. He was burnt out, fed up with his lot. He found my questions about his work irritating.’

‘And then he kills himself.’ Medievsky sounded sceptical.

‘He didn’t kill himself,’ said Purkiss.

‘What?’

‘Look.’ Purkiss pushed past him and went over to the body, stepping around the sticky stains on the floor. He lifted Keys’s eyelids one by one with his thumb again. The whites of the eyes were almost obscured by webs of crimson.

‘Conjunctival haemorrhages,’ said Purkiss. ‘And look here.’ Gently he tilted the corpse’s chin back. He pointed to the faint purple smudges, which would have been all but invisible on normal skin but stood out against the blanched, dead flesh. ‘Bruising on the throat. He was strangled, at least into unconsciousness, before his wrist was cut.’

Beside him, Medievsky said nothing, his jaw tight.

Purkiss pushed the pyjama sleeves up once more. ‘Further contusions, as though someone grabbed him. There was a struggle.’ He saw, too, the needle tracks in the veins, and wondered if Medievsky noticed them.

The infirmary door opened. Wyatt came in, Haglund close behind.

‘What the hell?’ Wyatt advanced, stared at Keys’s body, then Medievsky and Purkiss in turn.

Haglund said, ‘There’s a problem.’

For a moment Purkiss thought he was referring to the body, and wondered at the man’s understatement. Haglund raised one of the satellite phone handsets. ‘There’s no connection.’

‘What? Give it to me.’ Medievsky strode over and snatched the handset from Haglund. He thumbed the keys, listened.

‘Dead,’ said Haglund.

Medievsky: ‘Get the other handsets.’

‘I’ve tried two of the others so far. Nothing.’

‘Okay.’ Medievsky jerked his head towards the door. ‘Round the others up. We need to try every computer for an internet connection.’

‘The problem will be with the satellite link itself,’ said Purkiss. ‘The dish might be damaged or faulty.’

‘We still need to check.’ Medievsky gestured more urgently towards the door.

*

H
alf an hour later, they were in the mess, all eight of them. Only Budian and Avner were seated, Budian white faced and hunched, Avner staring into space, dazed. The rest milled about, as if to stay still was to invite further disaster.

Medievsky said: ‘All right, people. Internet and telecommunications are down. We suspect there’s a fault with the satellite dish. We’ll need to take a look at it. But it means we cannot notify anybody of what’s happened here, at least for now.’ He folded his arms, looked at their faces one by one, his leadership position reasserted. ‘I don’t need to tell you I understand what a shock this is to you all. It’s a shock to me. But the analysis of exactly what happened to Douglas Keys will have to be postponed until after help has been sent to the station. And this requires us to reestablish contact with the outside world as a matter of priority.’

‘It’s obvious what happened.’ Avner’s eyes were wondering, though he was still staring straight ahead. ‘The doc slashed his wrist. Killed himself.’

Medievsky glanced at Purkiss. ‘I regret to say it does not appear to be so straightforward as that. There is evidence that Doug was attacked.’

The effect on the room was electric. Purkiss watched Wyatt. His eyes widened, though he said nothing, and even made eye contact briefly with Purkiss. Clement’s gaze flicked from one person to the next, as if she was more interested in each individual’s reaction than in what Medievsky had said.

Montrose said, quietly, ‘You mean someone murdered Keys?’

‘We cannot know. But it’s a possibility -’

‘One of us?’ Avner cut in, his voice rising on the last word.

Medievsky’s tone remained level. ‘I must ask every one of you to be on his or her guard. And I will need to speak to each of you about last night. About whether you heard anything in the night, or observed anything.’

‘You just said the analysis would have to wait, man.’ Avner twisted on the sofa to look directly at Medievsky. ‘Till we get help. Till the police get here.’

For the first time Purkiss noticed a tremor in Avner’s hands, which he tried to suppress furiously by thrusting his hands between his knees. The younger man had told his story several times already, relating it anew as he encountered each colleague. He’d gone to his laboratory at seven that morning to amend some notes he’d been making the day before, having woken and realised there’d been a flaw in what he’d written. When he was finished, Avner left the lab and passed the infirmary on his way towards the mess. He’d noticed a light from under the door of the infirmary. Keys often rose early and went to the infirmary, and it was Avner’s custom if he was passing to bang on the door and call out, ‘The butler’s just sounded the breakfast gong, doc,’ or some comment along those lines. Usually this earned him an irritated rejoinder from Keys. Today, there’d been silence.

Avner had walked on, but something had made him stop and go back and knock again and ask the doc if he was in there. When there was no reply, he’d pushed open the door.

‘A scene from hell, man,’ he said, covering his face. ‘A god damn nightmare.’

Purkiss was no forensic expert, but from the temperature of Keys’s body when he touched it and from the degree of coagulation of the blood pooled on the tiles, he estimated the man had been dead for three or four hours. Since perhaps four am. The deadest time of night, when even the poorest of sleepers had usually succumbed to a brief, merciful oblivion.

Medievsky said, ‘Yes. A proper forensic scrutiny will determine the facts. But our memories will fail us in time. I need to hear your individual accounts while they are fresh.’

‘What about the body?’

It was Montrose. He’d filled his coffee mug from the pot someone had got going, and he came over and stood beside Medievsky. ‘Keys. We can’t just leave him there in the infirmary.’

Medievsky rubbed his palms together, the fingers extended. ‘First, we try to establish contact with Yakutsk. The infirmary is a crime scene and we should not disturb it any further. We see if we can get help. If we fail... we move Keys to a more suitable location.’ He clapped his hands once, decisively. ‘Three of us will go and inspect the satellite dish. Myself, Gunnar and Frank. The rest of you go about your work as best you can. There will be no field excursions today. And stay out of the infirmary.’