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Carrick turned.

She put four filled plates on to a tray, and there were four glasses. He thought from the cooking smells that she had prepared boiled pork, boiled potato and boiled cabbage. Carrick stood. He assumed it was right for him to carry the tray, but she waved him away. He sensed that her authority, an imperious and short-armed wave for him to stay seated, had been handed down to her grandson. She lifted the tray and shuffled out of the kitchen.

He should never have agreed to being part of it, should have thrown it back in their faces.

He saw the painting. Johnny Carrick knew nothing of art. He went into a gallery only when he escorted Esther Goldmann. He reckoned the picture had class but the frame was junk-shop stuff — it would have gone into a bin at the back of any of the galleries his Bossman’s wife patronized. The painting, though, was different. It was not that Johnny Carrick was inarticulate, or stupid, but looking at the picture that hung between a wall cabinet and the spokes for drying washing, he could not have explained its quality. Very simple. An impression of depth. The soft ochre colours of old leaves that the winter had not taken off birch trees, the darkness of pines making a canopy, the gold of rotted compost on the ground, and the trunks stretching into infinity. He pushed up from the chair, scraped its legs back on the vinyl floor, went closer to it. He gazed at the heart of it and wondered where it was, what it meant, and why it was the only thing of beauty he had seen in the apartment. There was also a photograph in a little cheap wood frame, faded and with broken lines across it as if it had been folded for a long time. It was set inside the wall cabinet, behind the glass. He had lingered on the painting, but he glanced at the monochrome photograph that would not have measured more than two inches by one. Another forest. A young woman holding a baby. She had pure white hair that showed against the darkness of the black tree trunks. She held the baby close.

He should have quit. Should have made the excuse and refused to get on the aircraft, should have walked to the Pimlico office and confessed his fear.

Fingers were on his shoulder, as sharp as bent wire. He spun, startled, a kid caught out gawping. She pointed to his chair. He sat.

Should have cut and run — maybe would.

The plate was put in front of him. Boiled meat, potatoes and cabbage steamed into his eyes. She stood in front of the painting, thin arms folded, and blocked it from his view. Her shoulder covered the photograph of a young woman with snow-white hair who held a baby.

Carrick ate. She watched him, and he could read nothing of her mind.

Chapter 9

12 April 2008

There were four hours available to him. Carrick did not recognize himself. Should have gone back into his room, locked the door, then set the small alarm beside his bed. He did not recognize himself because he had never before felt such uncertainty and loss of purpose.

He did a part of what he should have done, was inside his room, had locked the door and armed the alarm, but he did not strip and crawl under the counterpane. Dressed, he sat on the end of the bed. The room’s walls seemed to press close, as if they intended to suffocate him. He could hear vague sounds seeping down the corridor, televisions, voices and footsteps, but they were nothing to him. At the heart of it was his feeling, deep held, that he wasn’t progressing in the infiltration. He had sat for nearly three hours in the kitchen, and the old woman had worked round him but had not acknowledged him. He might not have been there. No communication. His thanks for his meal, in English and understandable to an imbecile, had not been accepted. An offer to go with the empty tray to collect the four plates had been ignored, and she had done it. He had sensed, though, when his back was to her, that her eyes were on him and their force had seemed to burn his neck. But if he turned and sought to meet them they had snapped off him. When they had left, when he had held out his hand, she had kept hers behind her back. He knew nothing of what had been discussed. The dilemma was clear to him: if he did not push for inclusion his time was wasted and he would learn nothing; if he pushed, he attracted greater attention and risked greater suspicion.

Carrick left his room. He tiptoed down the corridor and past the doors to the anteroom, where Viktor would be in an easy chair, and to Josef Goldmann’s bedroom.

Carrick took the lift down, rocking with its motion, and held the bars at the glass sides as it plunged. He could feel the weakness in his legs.

He walked past the darkened reception desk, and past the night porter. The door was locked and he tried to force it. Panic rose. The night porter came to him and produced the key. Cold air hit him and chilled the sweat on his forehead, at his neck and groin. He had only his jacket on, no coat.

Beyond the canopy above the door, rain fell on the pavement. He went out and heard the door closed behind him.

Before him was the great edifice of a church, a ruin that was a monument. The orange lights from the street-lamps illuminated the rain on old stones still dark from the scorching of incendiaries. He did not know its name or history. He ducked his head and walked faster, skirting the square round the ruin. As he passed the church, a clock chimed — a mournful, doom-laden note — but Carrick did not recognize whether it struck the hour or a half. Dribbles of rain ran down his cheeks and forehead. He saw a cluster of drunks with bottles tilted to their mouths. One called to him and another started to lurch towards him but was pulled back, and he went on, left them behind. A girl beckoned to him. She had blonde hair that the rain disfigured and he thought the wet washed out the dye. He saw her heavy thighs below a short skirt, and went on, leaving her behind too. For much of his walk, though, there were no cars on the streets, and no winos, tarts or druggies on the pavement, only emptiness and the sound of his squelching shoes. He was off a main drag and crossed the side-streets between Kleiststrasse and Hohenstaufenstrasse where apartments were blacked out for the night and offices were charcoal-grey caverns behind their windows.

If Carrick had hoped that by walking through a strange city he might again recognize himself, he had failed.

He was sodden, cold, confused.

The sign on the corner of the block above him said he had come on to Fuggerstrasse. So damn tired … Another clock chimed, and he did not look down at his wristwatch to see how much of a four-hour window remained open. There was a doorway with a high step, and a door of heavy wood that was closed — probably chained, bolted and barred against the pariahs of the night. There was a polished brass plate beside the bell button, but he didn’t bother to read who worked, at what, in the building.

Carrick slumped down. Wet came off the mat and soaked the seat of his trousers. He wedged himself into the corner and had one shoulder against the wall below the bell and the bright plate, the other against the door. He drew up his knees so that they were against his chest, wrapped his arms round his upper shins and rocked. He couldn’t have made himself smaller or more insignificant, and his mind had clouded. He was beyond, now, any evaluation of the consequences of not being in a hotel room when a small alarm bleeped on a bedside table. Nobody cared. Not fucking Katie, not fucking George, who had cut him adrift and handed him over, not the fucking man who called himself Golf. What did they know of goddam Viktor, goddam Mikhail, goddam Weissberg, and the goddam old woman who was a grandmother? And what did they know of being alone? Not a living soul cared. He had no responsibility for missing the call of the clock beside the bed. A man passed, was across the street, walking briskly under an umbrella, but the rain must have blown into his face because he, too, had a drip on his nose. No, he didn’t recognize himself.