She stiffened. ‘Well, you stuffed that up for yourself, didn’t you?’
‘Now, now. Don’t play nasty. We’re supposed to be friends.’
Her eyes flashed. ‘Friends? We’ll never be friends as long as we live, George, so don’t give me that crap.’ Her south London accent became more noticeable as emotion took over. ‘You contacted me for one thing and one thing only: you want to come in out of the cold without being marched straight into Wandsworth at the start of a long sentence in solitary. You said you’d bring me something worthwhile to help you do that. Well, I’m waiting.’ She took a slurp of her drink, her face flushed.
Straight for the throat, thought Paulton. Like an attack dog. It was a reminder not to push her too far. In her position she would know people she could call on if she wanted someone taken care of quietly.
‘And I keep my promises,’ he assured her smoothly. ‘For example, I know of at least five agents-in-place in the UK, still active, still gathering intel, still reporting back to Moscow, Langley and Beijing. At least one of them is turnable.’ He smiled. ‘That’s what you’re really after, isn’t it? Someone you can add to your credit list of achievements.’
He saw by her expression that he had struck a nerve. Look at any SIS officer, and you would see what you’d expect to see — a spy in plain clothing. But peel back the skin, the carefully crafted outer layer, of the ambitious ones, and you’d find a bureaucrat with an eye to the main chance — the gold chalice of spy-running: having their own double-agent on tap. And one with a potential line right into Moscow Central was still the purest gold of all.
‘I’ll need more than that.’
‘Of course you will. And I have something better. A lot better.’
‘Paulton, if you’re stringing me-’
‘I’m not. And before you tell me what nasty, despicable things you can have done to me, remember that I know things you and some of your friends in high places would rather I didn’t know.’ He shrugged. ‘Some of it is, shall we say, less than current. Old hat. Passe, even. But still embarrassing to those in power. However, let’s not fall out over that. No, I have what dear old Gordon Brown used to refer to rather boringly as “a package of measures”. Only my package comes with a lot more meaning.’
Deane waited, eyes dull.
‘Clare Jardine.’
Deane frowned. ‘What about her? We had her, then she ran. I told you.’ She pulled a face. ‘I can’t say I’m surprised. But there are people above me who agreed to leave her be, as you know. She’s untouchable.’
‘But you didn’t agree, did you?’ Paulton resisted the temptation to grin, knowing her secret. This wasn’t the moment for triumphalism. ‘You want her to pay for what she did to Bellingham. Quite right, too. I sympathise. And she will pay, I can assure you.’ He uttered the words, feeling the weight of the mobile phone in his pocket, which held the data Maine had sent him. It had been very last minute, and not as helpful as he’d hoped. But the intelligence analyst had done his best.
What Paulton now knew was that there was little chance of tracing Jardine in the normal way. She appeared to have gone off the grid after returning from Red Station and killing Sir Anthony Bellingham, and had no home address, no family and no close friends. But he had a good facial photo of her, which should help Gorelkin’s gorillas in their search.
A pulse was beating in Deane’s throat. Paulton recognised the signs of anger beating beneath the surface. Deane had worked under Bellingham in MI6. She had been one of his protegees, one of a posse of SIS recruits loyal to him and hanging on to his coat-tails. Ironically, had Bellingham survived, Deane’s advance in the service would not have been quite so rapid. But sudden gaps in any organisation created opportunity for the ambitious. He doubted Deane had ever considered it, but with his death, there had been a vacuum and she had moved on up ahead of her colleagues. The fact that he considered her totally unsuited to the job was beside the point. Played right, she could still be useful to him.
‘Do you know where she is?’
‘I have an idea, yes. But that’s not the only part of the package.’
‘Really? Who else have you got — Lord Lucan?’ Deane didn’t bother hiding her scepticism. ‘Not interested.’
‘Not even close. I know who put an end to poor old Roman Vladimirovich Tobinskiy in King’s College.’
Deane’s eyes showed a spark of interest, quickly supressed. ‘How can you know that?’
He grinned. What she meant was, even she doesn’t know that. ‘I know how they found Tobinskiy, I know about the guard leaving his post the night he was killed. . and I even know the name of the man who came over especially from Moscow’s Special Purpose Centre to run the kill team who carried out the assignment.’
The thought processes as Deane ran through the permutations were almost painful to watch. Paulton let them run without interrupting. He knew what was happening. Boxes were being ticked, targets lined up, scores being calculated for the final personal triumph.
Finally, she said, ‘Are you saying Jardine wasn’t involved?’
It was a minor point, but one he knew she would consider. Vengeance is a hard goal to let go.
‘She knew nothing about it.’ As her face fell, registering disappointment, he added smoothly, ‘But in the final analysis, who will be able to tell? She was right there when it happened, she knows the Russians, she was already a bad apple in the barrel.’ He shrugged meaningfully. ‘You can do with that what you will. I presume you have people looking for her?’
She gave a hint of a nod, but no more. She would have to be careful committing resources to look for a person of no official interest purely for her own ends; but he had no doubts that she already had a team working on it. Outsiders, probably, a bunch of contractors from one of the many shadowy private security companies with offices in Mayfair.
He watched while she worked out the prizes this could bring her: the team responsible for the murder of a Russian dissident in a London hospital, including their senior Moscow chief; the woman who had murdered her boss, Bellingham. A shot at the top job.
Game, set and match.
TWENTY-ONE
Alice Alanya stared at Harry. ‘I didn’t realise. How did it happen?’
Harry didn’t want to go through the shooting again; he’d done that enough already. But he owed Clare some recognition with her friend. ‘She was helping Rik and me track down Zubac. We found him but he got the jump on us and shot Clare. He was going to finish her off, then me, when she used a knife on him. She saved my life.’
‘That’s why you want to help her.’
He nodded. ‘And she helped someone else. I owe her for that, too.’
‘I don’t know what I can tell you,’ she said after a moment’s thought. ‘I haven’t heard from her, if that’s what you’re asking. Not since. . well, ages.’ She stopped speaking.
‘But you used to, before she was shot.’
She shook her head, but it didn’t amount to a denial. He decided not to push it.
‘You’ve heard of Roman Tobinskiy?’
‘Of course. What about him?’
He told her about Tobinskiy’s death in King’s College Hospital. She looked shocked, even stunned; with her position in MI6, working on the Russian side, she would be well aware of the gravity it would bring to international relations if the death was proven to be suspicious.
‘Clare was recovering in an adjacent room,’ he added. ‘She may have heard something that made her run. If she did, then the killers will be after her.’
‘Killers?’
‘Two men raided the security control centre at the hospital earlier today and took the CCTV hard drive. It would have held footage of the night Tobinskiy died and of Clare leaving the hospital minutes later.’
Alice touched a hand to her mouth, eyes wide. The implications were clear and she knew what it meant for Clare. ‘My God. How awful.’