The younger man slapped his briefcase on the table, pushed the flowers aside, and said to the older man, ‘I suggest that you’re now Golf, and I think it would be appropriate if I were Delta. That all right with you?’
At that moment, Carrick believed the older man — Golf — betrayed confusion, as if he wondered whether the piss was taken but couldn’t be sure of it, and he thought Delta an ally of sorts, but it passed.
Carrick listened, and Katie stood behind him, her fingers gripping the muscles of his neck, and the man, Golf, said, ‘You will be told the minimum of what we have. Bluntly, the more you know the greater is the potential compromise to the operation — it’s called Haystack — in the event of you being suspected, then tortured. And you would be tortured … The stakes, for us and for those we regard as the potential enemy, are very high.’
He flicked his fingers. Delta opened the briefcase, and took out a map. Its sheets were Sellotaped together, and lines were drawn across it. Then photographs spilled out and he saw the images of Josef Goldmann, Viktor, and a bull of a man, with dead and chilling eyes. Delta’s finger stayed on that picture.
The man, Golf, said, ‘Where they lead you, you go. I imagine it will be to him. I don’t gild it, November. This man, Reuven Weissberg, will be as ruthless as a ferret in a rabbit warren, and if you fail with him — though we will try, bloody hard, to save you — you are, without question, dead. So, no misunderstandings. Dead.’
Chapter 6
Carrick checked his bag again, had done it three times.
The first time he had gone through it, when tension had tightened his arms and made them clumsy, he had invented an excuse. He had said to Viktor he had no toothpaste so he’d walk down to the arcade and buy some. He’d thought there might be a brush contact or a casual approach — he’d be asked for directions or a light for a cigarette — and he had walked the three hundred yards to the chemist, had lingered inside and let the queue stay in front of him, then sauntered back, but no one had stopped him. He had been unable to report at first hand his flight and destination details, so had texted the information through. It was a shadow world he lived in, and needed lights shining bright, and those lights were brush contacts and approaches. Unless an undercover believed that support was close, he was alone … which festered.
He had not felt like this before, since coming to SCD10 and working with George and Rob. He sensed his isolation, and hated it. Could, of course, have turned them down. Was within his rights, and would have been backed by the Police Federation. It hurt that they had not attempted to talk him round and build his ego, but had taken his acquiescence for granted. Now the clock had moved on, and the chance to quit had gone. Viktor shouted from the staircase to the ready room that they were to move in five minutes.
He didn’t get a remark from Grigori, or from the housekeeper. Carrick did not belong in that household — their view, not hidden. He wore his best suit with his raincoat, and carried no weapon. The only protection he would offer Josef Goldmann was his body and a repetition of the instinct that had caused him to charge across the pavement and tackle a man. It would be his reputation, a bullet-catcher. The housekeeper was in the kitchen preparing food and Grigori was watching the satellite. Carrick went upstairs and dumped his bag by the front door.
The trust factor had been like a backbone to the operation of entrapment against Wayne in Mallorca, George had said, and the senior detective in charge of the investigation had nodded vigorously. ‘I can’t demand trust, or loyalty, I have to earn it.’ The handlers had been close and had lifted him … He had worn a wire woven into the waistband of his trousers, and the microphone was in the central button — had to be there because it was so damned hot. He’d had to plead a skin allergy as a reason for not joining Wayne and his associates in the pool below the villa’s patio, and for staying in the shade with his shirt on. They were brilliant guys who had nailed Wayne and his associates in Rotterdam when they’d taken delivery of the container from the docks. But it was history, and history had no place in the bloody present and the bloody future.
Grigori had come up the stairs, was behind him.
And the Bossman descended from the first floor with the family, kissed the kids and hugged his wife.
Viktor went down the front steps first, did the checks. Carrick had already brought the car to the door and Grigori had swept it. He thought the Bossman appeared pale, strained, the wife was distracted and the kids seemed to have caught something of their parents’ mood: they clung to their father’s arm.
Viktor nodded and had the rear door open for Goldmann; the boot lid was raised. Carrick threw in his own bag, the Bossman’s soft leather one and Viktor’s, then ran for the driver’s door.
He pulled away from the kerb.
He glanced in his mirror, saw the road behind was clear, saw the preoccupied gaze of the Bossman, as if he stared at nothing.
Viktor watched Carrick.
He thought Viktor’s eyes were locked on his face, studied it. Carrick did not know what the man thought he could learn from watching a driver’s expressions, movements, twitches, blinks. It was as though Viktor searched for a truth about him. He sensed no acceptance there … He took the car out on to the main route going west towards Heathrow. He played the part of the careful driver and often looked up to the mirror, but could find no car or motorcycle tailing them. Should have been able to see them if they were there, because that was Carrick’s trade. Almost shivered, felt the aloneness.
Remembered that cold, emotionless voice from the narrowboat: Where they lead you, you will go.
Felt he was on soft ground, sinking, and that nothing familiar remained to cling to.
‘Good of you to call by, Christopher … ah, and this is Luke — Luke Davies. I’m sorry our paths haven’t crossed before, Luke. I hear good things of you … Run it all past me, Christopher.’
It was the first occasion, in the five years and three months since he had joined the Service, that Luke Davies had been in the restricted-access lift to the top floor, east wing, of VBX, and the suite of the director general. He regarded himself as a creature of independence, a free and liberated thinker, and it annoyed him that he felt pangs of nervousness. He nodded in reply — and perhaps there was a trace of something surly at his face, but Francis Pettigrew’s glance lingered the fractional moment longer than necessary. He disliked himself for it, but smiled and did the head bob again, adopted a servile pose. He had not spoken as that would have betrayed his origins: a housing estate in the Yorkshire city of Sheffield, where his father was, the last he’d heard more than three years back and closer to four, a window cleaner, his mother did school lunches and his brothers were a lorry driver, a plumber and a struggling motor-repair mechanic. He felt disadvantaged. There were two cricket bats, autographed and mounted on the wall, but Luke Davies didn’t play. On another wall was a panoramic photograph of a villa with a backdrop of Tuscan hills, but Luke Davies lived like a pauper in Camden Town. On a side table, in a silver frame, was the photograph of a wife and three children, but Luke Davies was not even in a stable relationship. There was a friendship between the two older men. And Luke Davies was outside and felt awkward … and listened.