‘Poor old Rawlings.’ Lawson grimaced a smile.
‘Rawlings — I don’t understand your comment — is unlikely to be a member of a criminal conspiracy. He’s outside the loop of confidences, but has access and has never shown any sign of utilizing it. I don’t understand what you find amusing. These are serious matters. Officers take considerable risks. This is dangerous and delicate work, no laughing matter.’
From his briefcase, Christopher Lawson took a sheet of photocopied paper and passed it. It was taken and read. It listed the offence of driving a vehicle with excess alcohol in the blood, and gave the name of the accused.
George shook his head, pushed the sheet to his sidekick. Lawson saw their frowns, shaken heads, disbelief.
‘That’s extraordinary. He doesn’t touch it. This doesn’t make sense.’
Lawson said, ‘Might provide an opportunity for promotion, something of advantage to us … When is your next scheduled meeting?’
He was told where and when. He asked, without an explanation as to the use it would be put to, for a fast sight of the undercover’s file. With no good grace George lifted the telephone, sent for the file. Nothing more to say. Lawson went further back on his chair legs. George chewed a nail and his lips seemed to move as if he was rehearsing what he should have said but had not. Rob was following the flight of gulls between the blind’s slats, and had the look of a man who has lost something as precious as faith. The file was brought in. The girl was boot-faced, as if she confronted an enemy. Quite a pretty girl, made prettier by the undisguised anger at her mouth. Lawson assessed her as the girl Friday. She reached out with the file, to pass it to her superior, but Lawson stretched out his arm, the quickness of a snake’s strike, and his fingers intercepted it. For a moment he and the girl had hold of it, then it was loosed.
Lawson held it high, above his shoulder. It was taken behind him, a relay baton. He imagined it would be speed read. Silence fell. He thought that little would be left of the man’s nails, and that every seagull traversing the skyline of SW1 had been tracked. There was the rustle of papers behind him. The file was passed back and, without comment, he handed it on to the girl, and thought she hated him. He stood.
Of course, there would be a final throw. George said, ‘This is a very professional and dedicated officer, currently working in a difficult environment. Nothing should be done that puts his safety at risk.’
Lawson smiled, the enigmatic one that betrayed nothing of his aspirations. Clipper Reade had always referred to agents as the mushrooms of intelligence officers in the field. ‘You know it, Christopher, they’re best kept in the dark and fed on shit.’ Lawson had always chuckled when the Texan growled out his mushroom bit.
‘I’ve matters to deal with, gentlemen — and young lady. Thank you for your time … Yes, matters are coming to a head and I believe they involve dangerous men.’
Rain lashed down. Flooding on the road between Poznan and the frontier had delayed them, and the approach to the bridge had been slow. They had been in single-line queues of heavy lorries. A six-hour journey had taken ten, but the last run had been faster, on the autobahn.
Mikhail brought Reuven Weissberg down the wide street, past the grey mass of the Russian embassy, took the diversion around the Gate, then went left. He skirted the memorial to the killed Jews — a great open space of rectangular dark stone blocks, like rows of different-sized coffins — flashed the code on the zapper, then drove down into the basement parking area and into the numbered slot. The jolt woke Weissberg.
He was home.
He took the lift up, Mikhail with him. It was standard duty for the bodyguard to escort him from the car to the lift, and from the lift to the penthouse door. Mikhail, from his past, knew the theory of close protection and put it into practice. A man who could be a target was most vulnerable when arriving at a destination. He put his key into the door’s lock, and the sound of it turning would have alerted her. She would have been waiting for him, and he rehearsed in his mind what he would say about the delay through flooding west of Poznan because she would scold him for his lateness. Had barely turned the key when he heard the shuffle of feet. Mikhail always waited with him until he was inside, then would go down and clean the car, take it out and top up its fuel tank. Mikhail always left him alone when he came back, was greeted by his grandmother.
He held her.
She was tiny in his arms, but his bear-hug was gentle, and he was careful not to hurt her. She offered him each cheek in turn and he kissed the lined skin. He saw clouded opaque colours in her eyes and wetness. The damp was from the infection, not tears. He had never seen her weep. He was now in his fortieth year, and for the last thirty-five — as a child, a teenager and as a man — he had lived with her, been cared for by her and had loved her. She stood on tiptoe in his embrace. Had her heels been on the floor, her height would have been 1.61 metres, and her weight was a fraction under forty-eight kilos. As always she was dressed in black: flat black shoes, thick black stockings, a black skirt and a black blouse, and because winter had not yet passed for her, she had a black cardigan over her shoulders. She wore no jewellery, had no cosmetics on her face, but her hair was pure white. As he held her, his fingers were in the hair at the back of her head, and it had been white — with the purity of fresh-fallen snow — from his earliest memories. He loosed her and she stood back to gaze up at him.
She did scold him. ‘You’re late. I’ve been waiting for you. I cooked and it’s ruined.’
He told her about the flood on the road west of Poznan, the delays near the frontier bridge across the Odra river.
‘Have you eaten?’
He said he had not.
‘Then I’ll cook for you — but you smell. First wash yourself, and when you’re clean come to the kitchen and your food will be ready.’
He did not tell her that although his belly was empty he had no appetite.
‘What did you find?’
He told her he had searched for a whole morning in the forest but had not found the dip in the ground that might have marked the disturbance needed for a single grave, that he had sat for a whole afternoon with his back against a tree and had heard the songs of small birds, that he had watched a house built of wood planks for a whole evening.
‘Did you not see the bastard who was then a child?’
He told her that Tadeus Komiski had not been at the house, but that the dog had barked, warning the bastard, who had hidden.
His grandmother held his hand tight. ‘But one day you will find him and the place?’
He promised he would. He stared into her eyes, and thought the colour was that of a little milk in water. But there were no tears … He said that the two men were coming, that their journey had started, that it was beyond recall.
‘Is it too great a risk? I don’t think so.’
He leaned forward and kissed her forehead and murmured that it didn’t compare with the risk she had faced.
‘You smell bad. Go and wash.’
Reuven Weissberg, who had been an avoritet in Perm at the age of twenty-one and had then outgrown the city, having taken control of the roofs of the fruit and vegetable market, who had ruled a gang’s empire in Moscow, providing protection for foreign business enterprises by the age of twenty-eight, who now controlled an octopus enterprise in the German capital city and was five days from the biggest and most hazardous deal of his life, went for his shower. He took it because his grandmother had told him to.