He doubted ground-to-air missiles were enough to bring Reuven Weissberg here, certainly not Josef Goldmann. A former paratrooper with a hole in his leg from scrapping with jihadists was hardly the man for deployment on attachment to the anti-terror people, infiltration into a Muslim community and its mosque. Not even to be considered. Didn’t matter. The Pimlico office of SCD10 had been cleared out one Tuesday morning in March two years back, had gone up to the Yard in best bib and tucker, had sat in a curtained-off area at the back of a lecture theatre with a few anonymous others and had listened to a lecture on the big three. They were microbiological weapons, chemical weapons and nuclear weapons. The lecturer had been a spook, and his name had not been given. He had not used the word if, but had talked of when. It had not made a deal of sense then, and Carrick had gone back to Pimlico and got on with reading up on the background biographies of Jed and Baz, club owners …
He thought of Josef Goldmann. Thought of Goldmann’s pretty wife, decent children, swank house, respect in the City and the social scene of smart galleries and top-grade parties — thought that only weapons of mass destruction would bring him out to this wet bloody riverbank with a forest that had been a killing ground behind him, the river and the bloody Belarus border in front. The spook lecturer, from Box 500 on the Embankment, had talked of an explosion that scattered lethal germs, and an explosion that scattered an aerosol effect of nerve-gas droplets, and an explosion that spread radiation from a dirty bomb.
Carrick could not cope with the thought of it. Did not try to. Blanked it and blocked it. Felt the warmth and strength of Reuven Weissberg alongside him.
They brought the food in two brown-paper bags. They had bought rolls, fruit and cans of Coke. It was long past midday, and it should have been the team’s breakfast.
Lawson understood.
It would have been Deadeye who had made the decision not to blurt out the bad news on a mobile-telephone link. Bad news always came better face to face, eye to eye. They had driven into the camping area, had closed the doors quietly behind them, had wandered — as if strolling in Sunday-afternoon sunshine — towards the minibus. Lawson had climbed out. Adrian and Dennis had followed him. Young Davies and the girl had come from a picnic table.
The food had been given to the girl.
Now, meeting Lawson’s gaze full on, Deadeye twisted his head and nodded to Bugsy. Bugsy had that perplexed look, which said he’d gone into uncharted territory and didn’t have a mental map for it. His fist went into his anorak pocket and emerged with the loose lengths of strapping, tangled with the Velcro, and the box hung down from them.
Deadeye said, ‘He’d dumped it.’
Bugsy said, ‘Well, someone dumped it. Might have been him, might have been one of the others. I’m not there, I can’t say whether it was voluntary or under duress, and I can’t say whether or not who he was with was aware of him doing it. It was hung from a tree. Might not have been done openly, because the last time the damn thing moved was in the night. That’s where we are.’
Deadeye said, in the flat voice that didn’t change whether it ranged across triumph or something worse than disaster, ‘There are two sets of footprints there, only two. I would assume, Mr Lawson, that it was the agent with the main target. It’s by a place where a boat was kept but a few yards from it. It’s only what I’m thinking, the agent stripped it off and left it but not where our target would have seen him lose it.’
Bugsy said, like it was a slur on his capabilities, ‘It was working well, had a very decent signal. It was going to do the job for us.’
Deadeye said, ‘He gave no indication, not at all, that he wasn’t prepared to wear it. What he’s done, it’s come out of a clear blue sky.’
Lawson pondered on it, kept his counsel and gave no indication — not a trifle — of the stampeding emotions in his mind.
Bugsy said, ‘Well, that was me out of it.’
Deadeye said, ‘The marks were of two sets of feet, clear enough in the mud. Then there was a scrape, like a flat-bottomed boat but with a keel had been hauled up from the water. It had been dragged along a path from the lake to the road. That was easy enough to follow and no effort had been made to disguise the track that was left. Then there was a road. It’s the main drag, Wlodawa to Chelm. They’d gone along it. Of course, no traces. No scrapes, at the side, no footprints. I have to guess but it can’t be a big boat. What took us so long, we went a mile up the road and looked for a trace, and a mile down the road, and we can’t find it, Mr Lawson. Before you ask me, I don’t reckon there was a vehicle involved. I’m almost certain of that. If a car had been pulled off the road and waiting there would have been fresh tyre marks, and if a car, or a pick-up or a truck, had been called up and arrived just for the loading, there would have been the stamped-down places where the boat had been and their feet while they waited. I’m thinking, Mr Lawson, that the boat was carried along the road and then they went back into the forest and towards the river. Stands to reason, they want the boat for the river. We searched for that point where they came off the road, and we couldn’t find it. I’m not happy, but that’s the way it is.’
‘Why would he do that, Mr Lawson, ditch the gear? I mean, where’s he coming from?’
First, Lawson searched his mind: there had been bad moments when he had been with Clipper Reade, the intensifying-ass-pucker moments, but nothing as desperate as the moment now confronting him. What would Clipper have done? What would have been the response of the big Texan from the Agency? Well, for a start he would have lit a cheroot and — for a finish — he would have displayed no panic. Not a vestige. He asked how they were.
Bugsy said, ‘I’m flat, on my heels — No, I’m fine.’
Deadeye shrugged. ‘What do you need us to do, Mr Lawson?’
About as bad it could get was the loss of eyeball and contact in the last hours before an operation went critical.
He acknowledged the thoroughness of what they had done, thanked them for it, and suggested — not as an instruction — that they head for the river, that flooded area where Reuven Weissberg, his cohorts and the agent had been the last afternoon. He felt hammered by what they had told him, weak and old.
Lawson smiled broadly, displayed supreme confidence. ‘Yes, head on down there and get an eyeball again. It’s where they’ll be, with their boat, at the river. On you go.’
They had left. He had watched them drive away. Now Shrinks broke ranks. ‘I need to contribute, Mr Lawson.’
‘Best that you contribute when you’re asked to.’
‘Mr Lawson, the last time I ventured an opinion, I suggested that the agent had stress piled on him — in fact, “acute stress”. I seem to detect a marked lack of interest in what has been, and is being, inflicted on the poor wretch.’
‘If your “expertise” …’ Lawson’s tongue rolled contemptuously on the word ‘… is unwanted it could be because of its irrelevance.’
‘You’ve already asked too much of him.’
‘Have I?’
‘The effect on him of what you’ve done may last with him for years, psychiatric disorder brought on by the trauma of stress.’
‘Is that so?’
‘Damn it, you pushed him there.’ Shrinks’s voice rose. Never had before. Couldn’t have recognized himself. ‘You are responsible, only you, for driving him into a condition of the syndrome from which he may not recover. Even with the best supportive intervention and the best counselling this could be a long and potentially unpredictable business. But I see no indicators of you losing sleep over the inflicting of long-term damage on this man. And now he’s screwed you. What bloody irony. You pushed him that far, into the arms of those brutal creatures, and he has rewarded you by turning his back on you. Try this one. “Sow the wind and reap the whirlwind.” That’s about the limit of your achievement, Mr Lawson. You’ve played God with a man’s mind, his decencies and loyalties, and I doubt you’ve noticed.’