He saw Golf with her, and the young man who called himself Delta. There might have been others with Golf, Katie and the young man, but he was not certain if the group included others who lounged nearer the school gate.
The eye contact should have given him exhilaration … He went down into the depths of his professionalism. The instructors spoke of that: a guy could feel himself isolated, could think he was abandoned trash, but could survive if he clung to the creed of professionalism. Behind him, Viktor supervised the moving of Josef Goldmann’s quality luggage on to a porter’s trolley. Carrick went to Goldmann’s car, and a man was there, working on the bonnet paint. In front of that car was Reuven Weissberg’s. The man polished the paintwork with a soft duster, but not with enthusiasm; he made short savage movements, halted, then resumed, as if it was unimportant what the goddam car looked like. He wore the obligatory dress of faded jeans and a heavyweight leather jacket. His skull was covered with close-cropped hair and a snake tattoo was wrapped round his neck. He didn’t look at Carrick. Carrick dropped his bag, turned to Viktor, seemed to ask the question with his eyes, eyebrows: which vehicle was he to travel in when they moved on? As if in answer, Viktor zapped Josef Goldmann’s car doors. Couldn’t bloody Viktor speak? Silences, the lack of communication, should not have crushed Carrick as they did. He threw his bag into the boot.
So, he was going walking, would do the tourism bit, and he didn’t know why.
The siren was long gone. Carrick stared over the burnished roof, and the car park, through the wire fencing and across a street, and watched her as she sat on the low wall of the schoolyard.
It could still rule him, professionalism.
He stood aside from the boot, and Viktor supervised the stowing of Josef Goldmann’s bags. Carrick said, ‘I’m going to get some mints.’
Viktor didn’t answer.
Carrick said, ‘Going to get some mints from a kiosk.’
A small frown formed on Viktor’s forehead.
‘I’m not buying them in there.’ Carrick gestured towards the hotel’s swing doors. He was breaking a law of the trade he practised, was failing on due care, diligence. Needed to create the opportunity of a meeting but shouldn’t have started up on explanations: least said, best. Broke it. ‘Not paying the prices they want in there.’
A shrug, distaste. He didn’t know how much Viktor was paid for being the hood in Josef Goldmann’s shadow — might have been two hundred and fifty thousand euro a year, might have been more. Himself, he had been promised a new settlement, new terms of employment — not as part of the conspiracy of laundering — and the upgraded role of personal bodyguard: maybe a hundred thousand euro a year. Why would an employee of Josef Goldmann quibble over paying two euro for a tube of mints from a shop in a hotel lobby, and instead need to go down the street to a kiosk, or a small bar, and pay one euro for the same item? Convenience cost an extra euro, was that important? Explanations split open a legend. An instructor would have shuddered.
Tried to make a joke of it. ‘I suppose it’s sort of in the blood, not wasting money. Have to get the best deal …’
He walked away from the car, and from Viktor.
At the street corner, beyond the car park, he paused and waited for lights to change. It was an excuse for him to check both ways. He saw, coming up the pavement and with a good stride, that the big man — the bastard Golf who had ripped into him in the doorway, had humiliated him — closed on him … a bloody window of opportunity was presented. Didn’t see Katie with him, and was undecided if that mattered to him. He couldn’t look behind him, didn’t know what Viktor did, whether he was followed.
The lights changed.
Carrick crossed the street.
He was in a flow of people, anonymous. He passed the door to the library of the British Council and saw in the hallway a poster advertising the chance of rail travel from London to the Lake District. There was a shop ahead with a rack of newspapers outside it.
Mikhail came to the cars. ‘Where is he? Didn’t he come down?’
‘Gone to buy mints.’ Viktor’s response.
‘Why?’
‘Because the mints in the hotel are too expensive.’
‘You’re joking.’
‘No.’
‘Where’s he gone?’
‘Round the corner to a shop or a kiosk.’
‘How much will he save?’
‘I can’t say. His bag’s in my car.’
The grimace played at Mikhail’s mouth, and his hand rested on Viktor’s sleeve. ‘If I’m correct, he won’t be needing a place in your car or mine. He’ll be in the fucking river without a boat.’
He pulled the street map from his pocket. He talked, jabbed with his finger at the creased paper, and Viktor listened, and did not interrupt but nodded approval of Mikhail’s planning. They had entered State Security the same year, they had worked in the city of Perm and in the same section of investigations into corporate fraud, and they had been together when recruited by Reuven Weissberg. They had done protection together and had killed together. They had been together, day in and day out, till the day Reuven Weissberg had moved to Berlin and Josef Goldmann had gone to London. The separation had not divided them. They were like brothers, and wounded by the intrusion of a stranger.
Viktor said, ‘If it’s there, we’ll find it.’
‘I believe it is.’
‘Find it, watch him go into the river — and see him sink.’
British Homing World boasted that it was ‘The World’s Premier Pigeon Racing Weekly’, and on an operation Bugsy was never without it — or, more likely, without a minimum of three copies. On any trip of more than a week, the magazines were read, reread, and his invaluable companion. Their worth to Bugsy was that they lessened the frustration brought on by failure.
For hours now, all day, he had watched the two cars but the opportunity he waited for wasn’t offered.
In the pocket of Bugsy’s anorak was the tag, but the chance to clamp it had not come.
He had been through the stock lines of birds for sale, and their price, and in his mind had checked the cost of ‘Quality farm cleaned: Tic Beans, Maple Peas, Oil Seed Rape and Whole Maize …’ Without the magazines, he would have raged.
But it was clear to him, and this conclusion could not be avoided, the chance of getting a tag into Reuven Weissberg’s car had not offered itself. The goon had been there all the hours that Bugsy had watched. The guy with the lump-hammer head and the tattoo round his throat hadn’t even gone for a piss. The car shone. Would have made the job a hell of a sight easier if the goon had gone walkabout — hadn’t … Maybe the job of putting a tag into the car wouldn’t happen and maybe it would mean risking a wire on the undercover. Needed to happen, something did, because they had driven as if the Furies chased them to get to Warsaw, hold the contact and the visuals, and the bloody old minibus had been a croaking wreck after what had been asked of it.
Bugsy had listened closely to the guv’nor’s briefing. He’d been on big operations, enough of them, but he’d sensed this to be on a scale of threat greater than he’d known before. The guv’nor had authorized him to try to place a tag, but it just wasn’t possible. He saw, from his vantage-point, the bags loaded into the cars, and that just lifted the weight of the failure.
So, again, they’d be careering on the seat of their pants, and it would be down to the driving skills of Adrian and Dennis — and they’d bitched like fuck at what had been asked of them, Berlin to Warsaw.
‘I don’t know how long we have. Spill it.’ Lawson was at his shoulder.