‘He was from the Agency. He was Clipper Reade. He did central Europe out of Berlin.’
‘What did he look like?’
‘Big, what we would today call obese, and tall with it. Had a fine shock of hair but it was mostly under a trilby. Smoked cheroots. Had a voice that could be a whisper or a foghorn. He was pretty well known throughout the seventies and—’
‘How does he get to stand on the pedestal?’
The chauffeur took them on to the airport’s feeder road.
‘Don’t interrupt, just listen. When kids interrupt I fancy it’s to hear their own voices. He did a cover of being a salesman for spare parts in Czechoslovakian-made tractors. Could produce anything for the Romanians, Bulgarians, Poles or Democratic Germans when their tractor fleets packed up. We never quite knew how he’d landed the contract, but he had and it was a miracle of achievement. Amazing how many collectivized farms with broken tractors seemed to be on the edge of a runway used by the Soviet’s bomber fleets and interceptor aircraft, and how many farms on the Baltic coast overlooked their naval facilities. For almost ten years he swanned through those countries with officials from economic-development or agriculture ministries eating out of his hand. If you knew your history of the Service, had read it up in the archive, you wouldn’t need to be told. He was a genius at suborning agents, but most of all he had a nose for his work. Got me? A nose that sensed the frailties of men, and how they could be used. It permitted him to second-guess opponents, to anticipate, to act when others would hang back. I was privileged to work alongside Clipper Reade, and for nine months my junior was Pettigrew. In your modern jargon, Davies, “icon” is an overused word, but Clipper Reade was truly iconic. Of his generation, he was the finest intelligence officer.’
‘And he handed down words of wisdom that you cling to.’ Said tersely as a statement, not as a question.
‘Because you don’t understand your response is sarcasm. The DG and I know otherwise. Clipper was of an age before the computers you rely on, before analysis of El Int ruled. In his day, and mine — and the DG’s — officers were happy to get their feet and hands dirty. They were prepared to exist at the sharp end. Does that give you an idea of who Clipper was?’
Luke Davies pursed his lips, looked hard at him, and thought he hacked at the coal face of the Good Old Days, bloody days that were long gone. ‘Not quite finished — what happened to him?’
‘Busted, of course. Inevitable. Scrambled clear from Budapest not more than a dozen hours before he was due to be picked up, made it over the Austrian border, incredible in itself. Couldn’t last for ever, but was pretty damn good while it did.’
‘And drinks all round, back in Berlin?’
‘A few taken, yes—’
He interrupted. ‘But not party time for the networks left behind. Tell me. Arrested, tortured, imprisoned, shot?’
There was the roar of aircraft on the runway. They went down into the Heathrow approach tunnel and dead yellow light bathed them.
The softness was gone, the hardness returned and the jaw protruded. Lawson said coldly, ‘They were agents. Volunteers. They chose their own road. Agents never last, never can. Months if they’re lucky, weeks if not. Agents don’t last if they’re where you want them, at the heart of the matter — you’ve much to learn. They get burned.’
Carrick was jolted, shaken. The cabin shuddered and rattled. He remembered those landings at Basra when the transport aircraft had come down in a corkscrew approach, then flattened out and hit the runway hard — but it was Berlin, which was not a combat zone.
He turned to Josef Goldmann and smiled politely but ruefully, as if to say he understood and sympathized. His Bossman had one fist clinging to Carrick’s sleeve and the other to Viktor’s, his skin was milky pale and bore a sheen of sweat. His Bossman was, the file Katie had prepared said, a major player in international crime. He laundered money for Russian mafiya gangs, among others. He was a target for intelligence guys defending national security — and was shit scared of flying. He had bad shakes if there was turbulence. Carrick did not have that fear: he could jump from a moving aircraft with a ’chute on his back, or from a tethered balloon that was eight hundred feet up. For him, the fear was of being on the plot and alone.
Viktor pushed Josef Goldmann’s hand off his sleeve, while Carrick let the other stay. For the flight out of Heathrow, the Bossman had been wedged between them.
They went through Customs, then to Immigration. It wasn’t Josef Goldmann’s name on the passport he offered, but his photograph was there.
Carrick did not know where the back-up people were, how close or how far. He carried his own bag, as Viktor did, and he had said that Josef Goldmann should carry his so the minders would each be free to react.
A man met them, heavy, muscled, and hugged Viktor. They were led to a Mercedes. He thought of his own world as having been tipped on to the floor of the narrowboat by the men who had corralled him. Everyone said, when they were volunteered, that the moment never came to spin on a heel and walk in the other direction.
They were driven towards Berlin. Carrick tried to act out his role, the bodyguard’s, but found himself staring listlessly at the streets of a city he did not know.
Chapter 7
Carrick was first out. He did the routine. The car braked, the doorman advanced, but he was out and checked both ways on the pavement. Had reason to. How had the bastard missed at that range, so close? But the routine took his attention, not the events of a previous day. He would work out how the bastard had failed in the hit some other time. He stood across the car door.
The street was clear of dawdling vehicles and he did not identify a loiterer, just people, nothing to show that their business was in any way extraordinary or threatened him. The only gawpers were on the far pavement, separated from the hotel entrance by the traffic flow. Trouble was, Carrick had to act out the part of a man with more than two years’ active experience of bodyguard work, not the two weeks that had been allocated him. On the bodyguard course, more trouble: the teaching was for mob-handed protection, maybe seven or eight men deployed, maybe with an outer screen of police officers. Carrick knew nothing of what to expect. Maybe at that hour of the day everyone — old men in suits, young men in jeans and sweats or hoods, women with shopping bags and women with pushchairs, kids skiving off school, the elderly wrapped against the cold — hurried in Berlin, except two men on the far side of a six-lane street who watched indifferently.
‘Right, Mr Goldmann, let’s move — please — and quickly.’
He saw, could not miss, the worry lines knitted across his Bossman’s face, and also the gratitude shown him. ‘Out of the car, Mr Goldmann, and straight to the door.’
Everything happening to him was distorted, as if mirrors were bent, throwing up images that were grotesque and malformed. Concentrate, he told himself, and cut the shit. He reached down, took his Bossman’s arm at the wrist and levered him up from the depths of the car seat. Realized the dependence, could feel it, the way the man’s fist clawed into his sleeve.
‘That’s it, Mr Goldmann, and let’s go.’
The role-play consumed him, filled his thoughts. He looked round, saw that Viktor was behind the Bossman, strode for the swing doors and a man materialized. Hadn’t seen him coming. He came fast in a line, shambled and swayed. Might have been a drunk or a druggie. He was unshaven, dressed in clothes that had been slept in. A junkie’s young body but aged and haggard, his hair a dank tangle.