Vagabond (10 page)

She never criticised what he did.

The boy she had known had filled out. He had been a fair pupil in the classroom and promising at football, good enough for a trial as a seventeen-year-old with a youth side in Armagh City, and she’d watched him. He had given it all up. He had gone to war – fitness training replaced with learning the mechanism of weapons.

After two miscarriages, Bridie Riordan had given birth to Oisin, a warrior in Irish mythology, a great fighter. The child had a weak chest, was diffident and quiet, but he was what God had given her. From the kitchen, she could hear him wheezing in his bedroom. It was her life to wonder where her man was, and what he faced, and she knew no other.

‘I don’t know the place, and I don’t know the people.’

‘You have to go, Malachy.’

‘I’ll be off my patch. They’re strangers.’

Better than most, Brennie Murphy – one-time strategist and one-time Maze cage leader – understood the nerves of fighting men. His arm was around Malachy Riordan’s shoulders. They sat in the middle of a field on a plastic bag, which had contained cattle cake, to keep the damp from their trousers. The nearest hedgerow was more than forty yards away. The cattle tramped close to them and sniffed at the cake’s scent. Brennie Murphy could soothe.

‘Me go? How can I?’

‘You have experience. You’d know the questions to ask.’

‘I suppose so.’

The fingers, like claws, worked at Malachy’s shoulders, at the tension there, easing it. ‘We’re busting our bank to pay for this. We’re going to the edge and beyond of our finance. Hear me, Malachy. We’re taking money from what we pay the prisoners’ wives. We aren’t doing organisers’ fuel. It’s all going in this pot. Malachy, tell me it’s true. We need it.’

‘We have to get better stuff.’

‘And we’re not paying for shit.’

‘I don’t trust any man I don’t know.’

‘Malachy, you have to test-fire it. You have to see each item. There’ll be no going back if it’s shit. It’s different, not like it was. We don’t have a Libya. We don’t have those east-coast morons passing buckets round bars for dollars and sending us Armalites. It doesn’t happen any more and we have to look for it. We haven’t the explosives, the detonators or the firepower. We get a big shipment in, Malachy, or we could be looking at winding up the whole fuckin’ business. Got me?’

A reluctant agreement.

‘I can’t ask boys to go out with stuff we can’t guarantee. It has to be you.’

‘But I’ve never been there.’

‘Which of us has?’

Brennie Murphy, who had groomed his man from childhood, fed him the stories of war and trained him in the black art of low-intensity combat, reckoned he was close to the result he wanted. If the man stopped moaning, he might even get back to the village and into the pub before the lights went off.

‘You’ll be fine. Clever people are putting this together. I think I’d trust that Englishman. Why? Because he’s a crazy bastard. And you’ll have a good kid, streetwise and travelled, to look after you. It’ll be a small team, and we’re doing it fast because that’s the secure way. You worry too much, Malachy.’

Brennie Murphy’s joints creaked as he pushed himself up. It was like a bad dream that Malachy Riordan, the one man that all the volunteers would follow, was nervous of going abroad and doing business with people he didn’t know. There was no one else he could have sent.

‘When’ll I go?’

‘Tomorrow. Watch yourself and you’ll be fine. A kid’ll call by with your details, where to be and when. We’re depending on you.’

They came down the field and split near the barns. The dogs came forward and nuzzled his hand, then Brennie Murphy was gone into the darkness, slipping in the mud. He had gone beyond his normal caution:
I think I’d trust that Englishman
. Not like Brennie to commit to his opinion but Malachy Riordan’s spine had needed stiffening.

The BMW 5 series that Ralph Exton drove appeared, at a distance, to belong to a man of substance. It fitted in well in a village of almost royal connections. Two problems: it was seven years old, and had 189,000 miles on the clock – his skills didn’t run to fiddling the figures. He was living a few hundred yards outside the famous community’s parish boundary. The text had come through on his second, under-used mobile, the Samsung. He did business on the Nokia. The Samsung had been provided by his handlers. There was a code for meeting-place locations, in digits, then more digits telling him a time. Never a request, but an instruction. No recognition of how tired he was or what he had been through that day – but they tweaked him and he jumped.

Ralph Exton came out of the empty house. He had switched off all the lights, leaving it dark: he paid the bills. Usually Toria glared at him if he suggested that money didn’t grow on trees, that wasted electricity cost money.

The fuel gauge showed the need for a refill. The handlers didn’t pay more than basic expenses, the Irish were always late settling, a furniture deal with some Indonesian-manufactured bankruptcy stock had gone down the pan and there was a delay – bloody German form-filling – on fire-damaged Leica lenses out of a warehouse in Chemnitz. He was ‘running fast to stand still’, as he liked to say. And he could hear that drill, and smell the cigarettes that had been lit close to him. He pulled away and towards the road.

An oncoming car had an indicator flashing, then the headlights.

She was coming home. It had been a lengthy appointment at the dentist – as good a fiction as any and he didn’t argue with it. Not a bad chap, when Ralph was in the chair. He made small-talk while he was scratching around at Ralph’s molars. He didn’t mention Fliss, just prattled on about the stock market. He didn’t know if they did it in the chair, set to horizontal, or in the back of his car – or in the high street in Reading in front of Marks & Spencer. He pulled out into the road and lowered his window – the system needed fixing, it was running slow, but that was an arm-and-a-leg job at the dealership. ‘Sorry to miss you, sunshine. Off to a meeting . . .’

‘How was your trip?’

‘Not bad.’

‘Anything concrete?’

Was her allowance going to increase or would she have to wheedle the dentist for some new clothes? And what about Toria’s pocket-money hike?

‘Early days. Anyway, I’ll see you.’

‘Did you find some supper?’

‘Had something out of the fridge – thanks.’

He didn’t know whether the dentist fed his wife first or afterwards, or whether he economised on that end of it. It had been good once, between Ralph and Fliss, when he had been starting out in the early nineties and had made his first million. She was a leggy secretary and he was a ‘disappointment’ to his skimping parents because he hadn’t a real job with a career plan. He had lost that first million, gone to the edge of the crevasse but computers had lent a helping hand and another million had soon been in the biscuit tin. It hadn’t lasted, but they’d been good times.

He accelerated up the road and saw her swing into the drive. Sometimes she had a shower afterwards and sometimes she didn’t bother, but they still shared a bed.

Off the Pangbourne road, among the old gravel pits that had been filled with water and were leisure places for anglers, bird-watchers, sailors and dog-walkers, there was a turn-off to a car park. It was a regular meeting place – after dark it was a favourite for gays and doggers – a fifteen-minute drive from his house. He had long enough to reflect that life was not simple and that the people on each side of the fence he was astride had him by the short and curlies.

He was slowing and his headlights raked over a line of cars. Some occupants ducked their heads and others used their hands to cover their faces.

She was parked on the other side, near to the exit. It was a small car and she was in the back, two big bastards in front. He had first met her five years before when she would have been just off probation. She had been with a man Ralph Exton had met once – in a back room at Reading’s main police station – and the situation had been explained. He’d had about five minutes to decide whether to co-operate or be taken to a custody desk, fingerprinted, photographed and swabbed for DNA. He’d have been charged under Customs and Excise counts and with a shedload of terrorism offences. It would have been a long one. He had bent under the pressure. Who wouldn’t have done?

She slipped out of the car, with one of her minders. Cigarettes were lit. He thought she showed signs of tiredness.

‘Just to bring you up to speed, Ralph.’

‘Thank you, appreciated.’

‘They want you in Prague tomorrow?’

‘Yes.’

‘My usual companion won’t be with me. Sadly, he’s not well enough.’

The minder’s lighter was out, but enough traffic passed on the road above them, heading for the motorway, for him to see flickered moments of her expression. Triumph and satisfaction writ large. Ralph could do insincerity pretty well. ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’

‘I’ll be there, and you’ll answer to me. We rate it important, national security. It’s imperative that we close down any possible upgrade in their capability of returning to widespread terrorism, and we need evidence. With evidence we can go before the courts. Ralph, my colleague might not have said this to you, but I will. You’re a key player for us and we appreciate what you do.’

‘Thanks.’

‘And the risks you take.’

‘Thanks again, and . . .’ No, not the time or the place. Trouble was, it was seldom ever the right time or the right place to start hammering on about the exit strategy, identity change and relocation. Or to raise the business of cash up front. He shifted on his feet. A lorry came up the road slowly, probably pulling a trailer. Its lights caught her face, hit the left cheek at the right angle. She was good to look at. She had a pretty mouth, no lipstick, nice eyes, no makeup. Something attractive, too, about the trainers, the jeans, the fleece and the anorak with the brand name covered.

She said, ‘I’ll be in charge of the deal in Prague. We’ll have discreet liaison, but it’ll be my shout and I’ll call the shots. Is that understood, Ralph?’

‘Quite clear, Gaby.’

He thought she was rocked but he couldn’t see her face now in the dark. He hardly ever used her name. She didn’t slap him down and didn’t kick his ankle. He wondered if she’d a home with a guy waiting for her, watching late-night TV. He thought she worked all the hours God sent.

‘I’ll have a bag-carrier with me. But I’ll run it. He’ll also do our basic protection, not that we need it. I’m very confident, Ralph, that we’re going to do this really well.’

‘Will the back-up know about me?’

‘I’m not inside that loop but I’m sure he’ll have been well briefed.’

She told him that his air ticket would be put through his letterbox before morning. Then she touched his upper arm and turned for the car. The minder was opening the door for her. He should have asked about a
per diem
allowance in cash because the Irish were slow – and should have raised the question of exit strategy, the size of the relocation allowance. He had to step back sharply because her car was into a three-point and skidded in the mud. There’d be another time. Did she fancy him?

The thrill of success was what she transmitted to him. He flashed his car and walked to it. He was annoyed that he hadn’t mentioned the daily allowance he’d need and that he hadn’t pressed for answers on the person joining them, how an outsider would fit. Her car had gone into the night. He wondered again who was waiting for her.

Timofey Simonov, a big man, was his best friend. He’d call him when he was away from this place and these people in their darkened cars. He’d call him from the car park on the station forecourt. He would be betraying his good, perhaps only friend . . .

His engine coughed and caught. Ralph Exton murmured, ‘Fuck me. Another day at the office. Fuck me.’

It was an important evening in Timofey Simonov’s social calendar. The seats in the nave of St Maria Magdalena were all taken. He could have been at the front where there were special places at special prices. This evening it was necessary for him to be seen but not to be prominent. The funds gathered by donation and from tickets would go towards the extension to the cultural centre that the Russian community in the town would promote. The ambassador had come from Prague, with the desk chief of the intelligence section at the embassy. Others had travelled from Moscow and were said to have influence with the personalities of the regime. And, he did not doubt it, there would also be people from the Americans’ embassy – they had an office in Karlovy Vary, small but a presence – and from the Czech units that focused on what they called organised-crime groups. He waited for the choir to assemble. It was a warm evening and he would have liked to loosen his collar and shed his tie.