Viktor had told him what was ‘impossible’ in a voice that carried no emotion. Brief and factual. Nothing in the words he used betrayed Viktor’s feelings on the matter, but his eyes were not so utterly controlled. In them, not hidden, was his contempt for a foreign worker allowed so close to the family. Viktor was not Josef Goldmann’s man. Two low-ranking officers in the apparatus of State Security, working in Perm — once with responsibility for political dissent, later in a department operating alongside the criminal police and offering protection to businessmen during the great sell-off of national assets — had realized they worked from the wrong side of the fence. One had been Viktor, the other Mikhail. One had been outwardly sophisticated, the other outwardly a thug. They had resigned from State Security and had climbed the fence — stepped across the ditch, whatever — and gone to an apartment in a tower block. They had been admitted by the old lady, had stood in the presence of Reuven Weissberg and offered themselves to him. They had brought with them a degree of respectability in the provision of protective roofs, a deep knowledge of the work practices of their former employers and a network of contacts. They had stayed together when Reuven had tired of Perm and moved to Moscow with his financial adviser and launderer, but had split when Goldmann had transferred his office to London, and Weissberg had relocated to Berlin. In Josef’s mind, and he had seen nothing to dislodge the thought, Viktor’s loyalty was first to Reuven Weissberg, second to the Goldmann family. In Berlin, Reuven Weissberg lived the life almost of a peasant, and employed no foreigners … Not Josef Goldmann’s way.
‘I don’t believe it.’ Esther slapped her hands on her thighs in frustration. ‘He doesn’t drink. It’s ridiculous.’
Was it a big or small matter? That was the confusion. Viktor had brought back from Russia the offer of the deal. It had gone through the fingers of Josef Goldmann and been referred to Reuven Weissberg. He, Josef Goldmann, would have turned it down the day it was presented to him, but the decision had not lain with him. He remembered his surprise on being told that a deal was to be made, and a market found for what was on sale, and arrangements for delivery concluded. It was beyond the scope of his experience — but he would not have dared gainsay Reuven Weissberg. It was, now, close to completion, and his trusted British-born driver was locked in a common police cell, accused of driving while above the legal limit of alcohol consumption.
‘You should do something. Arrange a lawyer. Get him out.’ She waved her arms, an actress on a stage, across furniture, at artwork, over carpets and drapes. ‘What’s all this for if you can do nothing? Are you powerless?’
Esther was beautiful to him. She was admired in company, was a honey-pot to men, satisfied him in bed to the limits of his vanity, and asked little of him. When her arms waved and her throat was thrown back, the diamonds mounted in rings, bracelets and necklaces flashed. He refused her nothing. His frown deepened. He was not in Perm or Moscow where a phone call, quoting his relationship to Reuven Weissberg, could be made to a police official. He was beyond the immediate reach of his patron. The satisfaction of the evening was gone, because a goddam driver was drunk and in a police cell, because she challenged him and he couldn’t rise to it.
‘So, tell me, what are you going to do?’
He stood and pushed her aside, went to the table by the door, lifted a telephone and dialled the internal number. It was the mark of the worry hovering over him — two men were driving the merchandise towards a pick-up and exchange point, an onward purchaser was in place, and the verifier of the merchandise’s integrity had been approached — that he wanted only to be in his bed, to sleep and lose the weight of the cloud. He asked Viktor to bring Johnny Carrick up. He had liked Simon. He had trusted him, within limits — there was never business talk in the car when Simon drove. He had thought Simon grateful for the inflated salary paid him, and that gratitude dictated self-discipline. He put the telephone down heavily. Was Viktor right? Should there be no foreigners in the house? But there was need of them, a goddam proven need. He heard the knock on the door.
‘Come.’
Carrick stood, was not asked to sit. Viktor was behind him.
Josef Goldmann paced. ‘Is there anything I can do, Johnny? Anything I should do?’
Carrick thought of the man who had pulled him from the wreckage of an under-protected Land Rover, who had put a tourniquet on his leg that might have been the sole reason it was not amputated, who had stayed with him, held his hand and told him bad jokes until the casevac chopper had come in. He thought of the man who had visited him in the field hospital before his flight home.
‘Straight up, sir, I wouldn’t have thought so. Send a top-flight lawyer down there and all you do is draw attention to yourself.’
He thought of an engineered meeting. The pub that surveillance had identified — better than an ‘accidental’ recognition in the street. He saw himself going through the door and seeing Simon Rawlings throwing darts, waiting his turn, then expressing all the crap, his surprise, and mouthing off that it was a bloody small world.
Esther Goldmann sat upright in the chair. ‘We should do anything possible. What is possible?’
He thought of himself going to the bar and calling back, asking what his sarge would have: being told it was the usual, Coke, ice, lemon. Had ordered a lime and soda for himself, had lied, not with difficulty, that he himself no longer touched alcohol, didn’t miss it and felt better for it. Had been asked, with the noise of the pub bar flowing round them, the obvious and banal question — what was he up to now?
‘There isn’t anything, ma’am. It has to take its course. Forgive me if this sounds brutal, sir, but he put himself into that situation and he’ll have to get himself out of it. Nothing you can do will take him out of that cell tonight.’
He thought of the lies and deceit that had tripped off his tongue in the pub. First a fact, then into legend. The fact was that he could have stayed in the army — just not the Parachute Regiment — in one of the support corps: signals, intelligence, logistics, ordnance. They weren’t for him. Then into the legend. Joined a firm that did bodyguard work, a firm that couldn’t get their hands on enough ex-Para guys. The acquired biography — the legend in SCD10-speak — was, of course, checkable and would stand examination, and there was a bogus CV available from a front address up in Leeds: an office in Leeds, run by a guy and two girls, supplied proof to the legends of maybe half a dozen undercovers. All lies from then on, up damn near to closing time, and the run of them broken only when Simon Rawlings was called up to throw darts at the board.
Josef Goldmann turned on his heel, as if this was a crux moment. ‘What are the consequences of this for Simon?’
He saw the Bossman’s mix of anxiety and irritation. The legend said he had gone on the bodyguard courses, checkable, and had escorted starlets and millionaires, checkable. All a lie. Johnny Carrick had left the army on a medical discharge, had gone before an interview board at the headquarters of the Avon and Somerset Police, had been lucky enough to have a former naval officer — now doing human resources — on the board, who had taken a shine to him, who had remarked that he was probably, duff leg and all, a damn sight fitter than most they recruited. He had sailed through a probationary half-year, then been posted to the inner-city station at the Bridewell, had found himself the oldest among the juniors and realized he did not fit easily with them; he had badly missed the buzz of active service with a front-line regiment.
It had happened by chance. Crown Court security had been beefed up to protect an undercover officer whose evidence was going to send away a drugs-importation syndicate. Police had crawled through the court complex, been on every landing, every lift, every door. He’d heard the chatter among the full-time court staff about the undercover — life at risk, wormed inside a gang of serious people, had laid a finger on untouchables — had known it was for him. He’d gone to see the officer who had supported him at the interview board and been encouraged: ‘Why not? They can only turn you down. My advice, give it a thrash.’ Before the trial had ended he had sent in his application to join the Serious Crime Directorate, Section 10, and when the letter had gone into the box he’d rated himself able to live with lies.