The body of an old man was slumped in an armchair, blood oozing from his chest through the torn fabric of his shirt and cardigan. The lenses of a pair of glasses hanging from his neck were spattered with blood.
That must be Lothar.
His eyelids flickered open.
‘Where have they gone?’ Rozhkov shouted at him in German.
The man managed to shake his head.
Rozhkov shot him between the eyes.
More noise.
‘Check the bedrooms!’ Rozhkov ordered.
Heike moved through the villa, her weapon raised.
She kicked open first one door — a guest bedroom — and then another.
Lothar’s bedroom. Heike scanned the room for possible hiding places.
Behind the bed and a wardrobe. She checked. Nothing there.
She glanced out of the bedroom window. The view was spectacular. A steep wooded slope dropped down to a quiet cove of blue and green.
There was a small garden behind the villa. It was enclosed by a high white wall, to which all manner of shrubs and vines clung. A small black gate stood in one corner.
Open.
She could just make out a footpath winding among the trees, heading down to the cove.
‘Rozhkov!’ she shouted. ‘They went out the back!’
She joined Rozhkov as he found a back door from the kitchen out into the garden and followed him through the gate.
The path was steep, but they took it as quickly as they could. Phil might be difficult to catch, but they should be faster than Emma. She noticed Rozhkov limping a little as if he had twisted an ankle, and so she squeezed past him.
A hundred metres or so below them, the trees briefly opened up, revealing the path. She kept her eyes on the spot and, sure enough, she saw a flash of yellow as first Emma and then Phil ran along it. Emma was moving fast for a grandmother, certainly as fast as the limping Rozhkov.
Phil stopped and glanced upwards. For a second, he stared right at her; then he was gone into the trees.
She rushed on.
She was pretty sure she was catching them up. They were getting close to the foot of the hill and the cove, which was rimmed with a narrow pebbly beach.
She emerged from the trees at a spot about twenty metres above the shore. Emma was running headlong through the pebbles. There was no sign of Phil.
Emma slipped and fell.
Heike stopped, and raised her gun, fighting to control her breath. The range was only about fifty metres, but that was difficult with a handgun, especially if you were panting as heavily as she was.
She could hear Rozhkov behind her.
‘Shoot her,’ he commanded.
Despite her age, Emma was moving fast. But probably not as fast as the two KGB agents.
They came to an opening in the trees and Phil looked back. He saw one of the agents staring at him.
Heike.
They needed a plan. Phil had one.
He caught up with Emma.
‘Give me your gun, Grams!’
‘Why?’ she called back.
‘Just give it to me.’
She paused and handed Phil her gun. In a rushed couple of sentences, he explained his plan.
He could hear them behind him. He was searching for the perfect spot. They didn’t have much time — the beach was nearing. Once out on the beach, they would be sitting ducks. Emma would be a sitting duck.
He found his spot and pushed himself into a bush.
Twenty seconds later, Heike appeared in front of him, breathing heavily. She paused and looked out over the beach, where Emma was running.
Phil could hear the sound of her colleague scrambling down the path a few yards above him.
He raised the revolver, cocked it as quietly as he could, and pointed it at Heike’s back.
Just for an instant, an image of Heike’s lively smile, of those glittering blue eyes, leapt to the front of his mind. But only for an instant. Heike was about to shoot his grandmother. And she would shoot him too, if she got the chance.
He had to time this right. He had to take out Heike’s KGB colleague as well.
Two seconds later, the man arrived next to Heike, limping.
The man spotted Emma on the beach. ‘Shoot her,’ he commanded in German.
Phil squeezed the trigger.
The bullet hit Heike between her narrow shoulders from ten yards. The recoil surprised Phil.
He steadied himself and moved the barrel of the pistol towards the other guy, who was turning towards him and raising his own gun.
Phil shot him in the head.
And then he shot Heike again, just as Emma had done, to make sure she was dead.
And then he was out of bullets.
Part Six
Epilogue
Fifty-Eight
July 1979, Buckinghamshire
Phil sipped his pint of Brakspear with pleasure. It was good to be back in a proper English pub, especially if it was the Three Castles.
He had arrived a few minutes early for his meeting with Mr Swann. He wanted to have time alone with a pint to try to process what had happened over the last couple of weeks.
It would take much longer than ten minutes to process; it would take a lifetime. He was still buzzing from the adrenaline of it all. He had avoided death not once, but twice. He had saved his grandmother’s life. He had plunged into the world of spies and spying.
He was also grateful for getting to know Emma better. Not only his grandmother as she was now, but also as she had been forty years ago, as a young diplomat’s wife.
He had left England a schoolboy, less than three weeks before. He didn’t feel like a schoolboy now.
He had slept with a woman for the first time in his life.
And then he had shot her.
He had had no choice about Heike and her colleague; it was self-defence, and defence of his grandmother. But he had had his first bad dream the night before. He knew it would be the first of many; perhaps a lifetime’s worth.
Emma had killed someone in cold blood. Murdered him. Sure, she had a reason to kill him — to avenge her brother’s death — but revenge wasn’t a justification for murder. This woman, whom he had grown to love over the last couple of weeks, was a murderer. What was he going to do about that?
Nothing. Until the tumour got her. Then he would think about it.
They had left the two bodies where they had fallen and hurried back up the path, which forked left to where they had parked the car. They heard the sound of a police siren as they were driving down the hill, and just managed to pull off into a driveway before a small Guardia Civil police car sped up the road towards Lothar’s villa. They didn’t pass any other police cars as they headed out of Jávea, pausing to dump the gun in a rubbish bin off a side road. There were plenty of GB registered cars on the Spanish roads in July, so they felt less conspicuous than they had elsewhere.
As soon as they had reached Dover, Phil rang the number Swann had given him. He was put right through. He told Swann that Lothar was dead and that he didn’t have the name of the mole, and he agreed to meet him the following lunchtime at the Three Castles.
He had come clean about Swann to Emma; after all that had happened, she didn’t seem to hold it against him.
After much thought, she had asked Phil about Mr Swann’s teeth.
The return home the evening before had been difficult. On the one hand, it was wonderful to be once again surrounded by the security and minor irritations of his family. On the other, he and Emma had told lie after lie to his parents, with his sister Mel looking on sceptically. She knew something was up.