As soon as Kevin opened the gate, the boy shot off. Kevin watched him disappear into the woods, feeling perplexed. It was bad enough that the kid had got in so easily, though that seemed innocent enough. Karpis’s presence in the pool house, however, didn’t seem innocent at all – Kevin remembered the clothes in the men’s changing room and the sound of talking coming from the women’s. And he also remembered the holster and gun, slung on a hook next to the clothes. Did Karpis have a special licence from the Home Office to carry it? Kevin thought it improbable. Possessing a handgun in the UK would get him arrested. What was he so frightened of that he would take the risk?
17
He hadn’t exactly lied to Peggy Kinsolving, Miles Brookhaven reflected; he just hadn’t told her the whole truth. He had gone to the Middle East, as he’d said he would, though only as far as Dubai International airport. There he’d spent three hours wandering round the terminal looking at bling in the vast array of shops. He could have bought a different watch for every minute of the year without making a dent in the stock on display. Not that he was at all interested in watches. He was using the mirrors and reflective glass counters to try and see if anyone was taking a particular interest in him. It was practically impossible – in the constantly moving crowd of assorted races, dressed in everything from jeans and tee-shirts to khandoura and keffiyeh; from mini-skirts and stilettos to abayas, saris, and burqas – to detect a pattern or to remember a face. But after an hour or so of watching, he’d felt reasonably sure he was on his own.
From Dubai he’d caught a flight on Thai AirAsia, and now he was looking out of the window as the plane began its descent over the unprepossessing approach to the Ukrainian capital of Kiev. The city itself sprawled in all directions, and over the tip of one wing he could see the Dnieper River as it flowed south towards the Caspian Sea.
He had brought with him only a small carry-on bag and after landing went quickly through passport control, where he received a stony look but was asked no questions. Passing through Customs with no delays, he entered the arrivals hall and soon spotted a little moustached man in a shiny grey suit, holding a sign that read M. Laperriere. This was Vasyl, sent by Miles’s colleagues in the Kiev Station.
Vasyl led the way outside to an open-air car park and indicated his car, an old Impala saloon that was missing a hubcap. Shivering from the cold, Miles got in the back and waited while Vasyl tried unsuccessfully to get the engine to turn over. After several tries he got out and, lifting the bonnet, fiddled around with something. Then he got back in, the engine caught and they set off. Miles wasn’t at all taken in by the pantomime with the engine. He recognised classic Agency training. Vasyl was checking for any other cars hanging back and waiting for them to leave.
Miles sat sideways in the back seat keeping an eye out of the back window as Vasyl took the E40 heading east, away from the city. After several miles they turned off at the signpost for Voloshynivka, and proceeded down its one commercial street until they came to a municipal park. It looked badly run-down, with muddy paths that must once have been gravelled. In the playground, the solitary swing had lost a rope and its seat dangled upside down, swaying around wildly in the harsh wind.
Vasyl stopped the car halfway down one side of the park. He pointed ahead with a grunt towards another parked car, a silver Volkswagen Golf. When Miles got out, Vasyl made a sweeping U-turn and parked facing back the way they had come.
Miles walked to the parked Golf and got in the back where he sat at an angle to a tall man, roughly his own age, who was sitting in the driver’s seat with the engine running.
‘Hello, Mac. Fancy meeting you here.’
‘Hi, pal. How’s it going? Sorry to fetch you out to this hole but I think it’s important.’ Mac had a pinched, pockmarked face and a throaty voice that always reminded Miles of a tough-guy detective in a Dashiell Hammett novel. There was nothing Bond-like or smooth about Mac. He continued speaking. ‘I’m pretty certain our guy is for real, and he wants to tell his story to someone who knows England.’ Mac gave a shiver, and fiddled with the dashboard control to increase the flow of warm air. ‘Godawful winters they have here. We watched your arrival and you’re clean. Vasyl would have noticed anything on the road.’
Then he handed a bundle over the seat to Miles in the back. It was a man’s jacket, of thick grey tweed with soft brown leather buttons. ‘It may be a bit big – it’s a size forty-six. I couldn’t find a forty-four. There’s a passport in the inner pocket,’ added Mac. ‘It’s Irish, and you’re Sean Flynn.’
‘How imaginative. Next time let’s use Murphy.’
Mac laughed. ‘Hopefully you won’t be needing it. There’s a wallet, too, with Flynn’s international driver’s licence. Langley had it made up, so the mugshot’s real enough even if the name isn’t. There’s money as well – about four hundred bucks’ worth in the local currency. They’re called hryvnia – you get a little over twenty to the dollar.’
‘What about his money?’
‘It’s in the usual place.’
Miles nodded. He took off his own jacket, checking first that it still held his wallet and passport, then he emptied his trouser pockets of loose change and his keys and put them into his jacket pocket. He handed this bundle back to Mac, saying, ‘Look after it. I don’t want to get stuck here.’
Mac replied, ‘The garage checked out the car yesterday, and it’s good to go. You’ve got a full tank of gas, oil’s fine and the tyres are nearly new. It’s a stick, five-gear. It’ll be dark soon and there’s snow in the east, so take it easy – they don’t plough for shit in this country. Mind your speed: the local cops can be a nuisance, though near the front speeding is taken for granted. I’ve put a map on the passenger seat here and marked the route. It’s a straight shot and your stopover’s exactly halfway there.’ He turned to look at Miles. ‘I think that’s it, unless you’ve got some special requests.’
‘Flashlight?’
‘In the glove pocket.’
‘Thermal underwear?’
Mac just laughed.
They both got out of the car. ‘Good luck,’ said Mac, but it was understood they wouldn’t shake hands.
Miles said, ‘Let’s make it the Caribbean next time.’ Then he sat down in the driver’s seat of the Golf. He turned the heater up high and watched as Mac got into the back of the Impala and it drove off, heading for the Embassy in Kiev. Miles gave it five minutes, studying the map, which had the route annotated with a marker pen, then set off himself, heading east and south towards the war zone.
He drove for five hours, stopping only to eat some fried eggs at a roadside café just before it got dark. The road wasn’t bad, and though it snowed at one point for a little while, the surface had been gritted and the Golf handled well. After the next town he turned on to a side road and followed a winding path, more track than road, until he saw a Cyrillic sign for the farmhouse he was looking for.
There was a closed gate at the front of the property, with a long chain wrapped around its top bar but no padlock; when he had opened it and driven through, he stopped and closed the gate again, putting the chain back as before. He drove another hundred yards until the track ended in a small farmyard, with a house on the far side. He parked as instructed in its adjacent wooden barn, closing the doors carefully when he left so that his car was not visible from outside.