‘I’ve read your summary — God, what time did you write it? Have you had any sleep? Your stamina amazes me — and I find a welter of innuendo, supposition, hunch and instinct that I can hardly offer up to the Joint Intelligence Committee. There’s barely a hard fact in it.’
Davies let himself turn his head fractionally away from the director general and fastened on Lawson. Seemed pretty damning to Davies, and he thought Lawson might bluster, but he didn’t. He was indifferent to the assessment.
‘Some would say, Christopher, that there’s barely enough to run with — even jog with … Some would say we should aim for something more detailed, with provenance, then scatter it far and wide, let others share. But that’s not your conclusion. You’re asking me to back Haystack, and to keep the business close inside the Service. “Inside” means that if the alarm call wasn’t justified we don’t face the titters behind the hands of colleagues in other services, who would dearly love to see us fall on our faces — but “inside” also means that if your suppositions are justified we’re going after a problem with minimal resources, and if we fail we won’t easily be forgiven. It’s an interesting dilemma you present me with.’
Spoken as if the matter in hand was before the chair of the golf club entertainments committee — except that Luke Davies was not a member of any golf club.
‘Very frankly, Christopher, if this didn’t have your name on it, it would be a non-starter. But it does have your name. You’ve listed the resources and time parameters on Haystack, and I accept them. My caveat is that you must promise to call the cavalry if you acquire proof of this conspiracy. I suppose this is all down to Clipper, his legacy.’
There was then, and Luke Davies saw it, a brief smile on Lawson’s mouth, small cracks at the sides where the upper and lower lips met. Then it was gone. He had no idea who or what was Clipper.
‘So, you have met the agent, whom you call November, recruited him, and fought off the opposition of his current handlers. You’ve run more men than I have, Christopher, but I’d be failing in my capacity as leader of the Service if I didn’t point out that you are asking much of this young man. You are putting a huge weight on his shoulders — is that justified? Is November capable of achieving what is asked of him?’
They had been in the cramped living space of the narrowboat for an hour. He had watched November, hardly ever contributing, and the man had seemed to Davies to go through the gamut of reactions. Anger, hostility, then weakening, as if accepting the inevitable, on towards a modicum of pride that he was called out, and finally the clear-cut vision of November’s exhaustion. The girl had done well. Her eyes had blazed antagonism and her hands, through the long hour, had never left November’s shoulders. She had sustained their man.
Lawson said, ‘I think Clipper, from what I recall, was clear on such a situation … As I said, he’s what we have.’
‘I hear you, but the burden he’ll carry is considerable.’
Lawson stood. ‘In such times, you use what’s available. As I said, he’s what we have … I’ll be in touch.’
‘And you won’t forget the cavalry?’
‘Not if the moment is appropriate.’
‘God speed, Christopher. I have to hope, of course, that you’re wrong, and it’s a chase after wild geese. If you’re right, we face a situation that is quite appalling in its implications, but you know that. Good to have met you, Luke.’
Lawson hadn’t waited. Was gone out through the door, and his long stride already crossed the outer office. As he turned to close that door after him, Davies saw the director general staring out of the plate-glass — might have been examining the city skyline and the great public buildings, might have been thinking of the ‘quite appalling’ implications. He could have sworn it, with a hand on the Bible, that the mouth moved and said silently: He’s what we have. Davies had entered new territory, was beyond his experience.
He closed the door, hurried after Lawson. He thought the Good Old Days had returned and that the bastard revelled in their resurrection. And the bastard had a plaything to toy with, an undercover to manipulate. He fell in, a pace behind, as they went to the lift, and instructions were given him about a meeting.
They had left early, as the dawn was coming up.
They were gone, without breakfast, from Kolomna. The schedule for the day, as laid down by Igor Molenkov, called for them to cover a hundred and sixty kilometres, and their destination was the town of Kaluga. He had reckoned they would achieve only a short leg because the route he had mapped was on the side roads south of the Oka river, which were too narrow to permit the Polonez to pass a tractor and trailer, or a horse and a cart, without risking going on to the grass verges. They were overgrown with dead grass and weeds that might hide a drainage ditch. There were many potholes in the road, but he could not fault the care his friend took in avoiding them.
It was nearly an hour since they had slipped away from the hotel, retrieved the Polonez from the lock-up car park. They had not seen a police patrol, but there had been tension in the car. A BMW, new, 3 series, with metallic silver paint, would belong to an individual of status in that town. The damage caused in an accident would have been reported, and the subsequent flight of the perpetrators. Molenkov had the map across his knee. Beside him, his friend hummed a tune, again and again, but he did not recognize it.
The countryside was flat, dull, unremarkable. There were small farm settlements, wooden homes from which smoke belched, and little yards beside them in which cattle or pigs were corralled. There were birch forests, and the open fields between them were not yet ploughed. And it rained, always, and the river, when they saw it, was high, near to breaking its banks. He noted on the map that three kilometres ahead was the big junction where the back road they used crossed under the meeting point of the M6 road from Volgograd to Moscow and the M4 that ran to Moscow from Rostov-on-Don, two great roads merging.
At the end of that day, wherever they slept and midnight chimed on a municipal clock, it would be his son’s birthday. Sasha, had he not burned to death inside the hull of a tank, would have celebrated his forty-first birthday; would have been a man of middle age, in all likelihood would have had a family, receding hair and a paunch; would have been his father’s confidant. His son had been snatched from him, a forgotten statistic in the folly of a conflict far from home. There had been no coffin shipped first to Dushanbe and the base over the frontier from that shithole place and that shit war. No commander had had the time to retrieve burned bacon from a wrecked tank in an ambush site. It would have been bulldozed off the road and abandoned. His son’s body would have been left to crows, rats and the scavenging bandits who had taken his life. Because of his son’s one great friendship, with the younger Viktor, he had gone with his friend to a hotel in Sarov in the early hours of a winter morning.
More thoughts cavorted in his mind, and he barely saw the great overpass constructions where the M4 and the M6 came together. Saw instead the shock on the one-time State Security official’s face when he was told of merchandise for sale. Recalled the handing over of two mobile phones. Remembered the code that he had been told for when the first phone was used, before it was to be thrown far out into the river than ran through Sarov. It had come — ###****51332365 — and two old fools, forgetful, trembling with excitement, had deciphered it: ### was confirmation that a deal was accepted, and each asterisk represented a quarter of a million American dollars, which would be paid them on delivery, and the numbers were a grid reference, longitude east and latitude north, where the delivery should be made. That phone was in the river, the second phone — also discarded — had made the one call and given their date of departure. They went under the great roads that carried traffic from the south and southeast on into Moscow. Lorries thundered above. He saw the wry smile on his friend’s face and grimaced because he had forgotten to give the direction. Yashkin punched him. They went past a parked patrol car. Yashkin, peering over his wheel, read the signs and avoided being transported to Moscow, in a roaring traffic line from which there was no escape, or to Rostov or Volgograd. He heard the siren, and his dreaming ended.