‘You’ve taken your bloody time.’
His man spun. Carrick had been pointing to a tube of mints in a cardboard box on a shelf behind the shop woman’s head. Didn’t finish. Lawson thought him like the familiar old rabbit in the headlights and reckoned the degeneration faster than he’d anticipated. ‘I’m here, we’re here. What’s new?’ Did the calm and quiet bit, that of the man in charge.
‘Well, for a start, I damn near had my knee taken off with a drill.’ A rising voice, at the edge of hysteria. ‘Try that for starters.’
‘But you didn’t have it taken off so can we get to something of relevance?’
‘First, in that bloody place I’m quizzed, and the hoods aren’t believing me — how close were you?’
Not the time to make assessments as to whether a man was a potential coward or a potential hero. Clipper had always maintained that the true hero was frightened fit to piss his pants, and that the true coward would concoct an excuse and slip away to the shadows. He thought the man was brave enough for what was asked of him, and he said what might just encourage the bravery he needed from him. ‘Close enough, always close enough, and with firearms. You could say it’s just a matter of sliding a safety and you’e back with us — but then we’d have lost the big game. Don’t mind me, but can we hustle?’
Two kids had come into the shop, had pushed past Luke Davies, who stood just inside the door. The woman at the counter, arms folded, had been waiting for their discussion — in a language she hadn’t a word of — to be resolved. Lawson didn’t do ceremony, pushed his man aside and let the kids through.
‘I think — yes, I’m sure — the time is about right for me to know what the “big game” is.’
‘Dream on, starshine … You don’t get big pictures. You have a target, Reuven Weissberg, and you stay up adjacent to him. Consider pilchards in a tin. That near.’
‘What do you think I am? Some sort of fucking robot?’
The kids had their sweets, and pushed back out, and again the woman waited on them.
‘What did you come here for? What was the excuse used?’
‘To buy a tube of mints.’
‘Well, buy them, young man.’ Lawson turned to Luke Davies. ‘Go on, buy a pocketful for him. You’re moving on, what’s the destination?’
‘Don’t know, haven’t been told,’ his man said. ‘Look, what we have to do is simple enough, we—’
‘Whose confidence do you have, and whose enmity?’
‘Reuven believes in me — not Viktor and not Mikhail. But if you were close enough to intervene when my kneecap was on the line, you’d have known that, wouldn’t you?’
He saw the flush in the cheeks and the blaze in the eyes of short-fuse temper. ‘We were close enough …’ He had oiled. Didn’t believe in splashing it liberally, thought the brusque tone better, like that was a short-cut to a slap on the cheeks. ‘Now, are we doing inquests or are we looking forward? Cop on, and get a grip. Should you have a wire on you?’
‘A sweep’s just been done on the room, and on me.’
‘Understood.’
‘What we have to do is this. We need a system of meeting, or connecting, having communication every few hours. And I have to know what I’m expected to learn about. It’s that simple.’
‘No, young man.’ Lawson stood his full height — he hadn’t the bulk and weight that had made Clipper Reade formidable — and jabbed his finger repeatedly into the agent’s chest, as if it was an emphasis tool. ‘What is simple is that I make decisions and I exercise authority at all times. As I said, your one job — only job — is to be up against Reuven Weissberg. Later, when you’ve got to where he’s taking you, I may — might — consider a wire on you. Not possible today, but an option for the future. Only a beacon wire. Do the job that’s given you, and only that job. And — it’s exercising me — why is Reuven Weissberg demanding you at his side?’
‘He was shot, had a flesh wound. That was in Moscow. When that creep came after Josef Goldmann, and I — well, Goldmann boasts about it. I’m the bloody angel.’
‘Is that so? Very fortunate for us …’ His little moment of wry irony was lost on the man. Time pressed, wasn’t there for wasting. ‘And you don’t know where the end of the road is?’
‘Do you not listen? No, I do not. Short term is what I know.’
‘I doubt we’ve all afternoon to converse. What’s short term?’
‘He’s showing me the Old City, don’t know why. We’re going to leave from there. Him and me are walking, then the hoods pick us up, and I don’t know where we go then … Are you really close to me?’
‘You couldn’t get a cigarette paper through the gap, believe me.’
‘It’s not fucking easy, you know.’ The head hung and the voice muttered.
Lawson took the seven tubes of mints that Luke Davies had bought, thrust them into his man’s hand. Did the smile, the confident one. ‘Nobody said it was.’
‘I’m isolated.’
‘Just keep cuddled up with Weissberg.’
‘If I lose his patronage, I’m dead.’
‘But you won’t, will you?’ He pushed him out. Took his collar, led him to the door, had Davies open it, and did the push, sent him out on to the pavement, saw him half stumble, then regain his balance and walk away. And Lawson saw the bright paper wrapping of the mint tubes in his hand. He counted to ten. ‘I’d have liked to give it longer. Can’t.’
He went outside, and Davies closed the shop door after them. Their man turned the corner, seemed bowed, and was gone.
‘Well, what’s your gripe?’
Luke Davies said, ‘He’s all but done for. He’s screwed up. There’s not much more left in him.’
Lawson sniffed. Seemed to him that an entire nation had smoked on that street, and he took the air into his lungs of a thousand smoked cigarettes, smoked cigars and smoked pipes and felt better for it. ‘He’ll do. He’ll last.’
‘For how long?’
‘Long enough, because it’s near the end. More to the point, young man, will we last the course?’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘You will. It’s us that the pressure’s on now, believe me.’
They walked back down the pavement, past Katie Jennings, and went towards where the others waited. In front of the hotel, on the far side of the street, he slowed, sauntered and tossed his head back so that he could admire the height and majesty of a modern hotel. In so doing he took the opportunity to see his man stop beside one of the two cars and stand apart from the hoods. Could he have guaranteed it? Not with confidence. Would his man last the course? No alternative existed. The man stood alone, and his shoulders were hunched, and there seemed about him, to Lawson, despair.
High up and with a crow’s view, Reuven Weissberg had his face pressed hard against the window.
He saw Carrick join Mikhail and Viktor, saw also the man who watched the cars, saw Mikhail look down sharply at his watch, then Viktor, and saw the slump in Carrick’s back.
He wanted to believe in the man’s loyalty. He craved the loyalty that had been the possession of Josef Goldmann. He had himself ordered the killing of men protected by bodyguards, and had made the equation that — in the crisis moment — the bodyguards hesitated and looked first for their own safety, then for the survival of the paymaster. Each time he had ordered the killing of protected men, in Perm, Moscow and Berlin, the bodyguards had lived. The blood on the street had not been theirs. And he could well remember the moment, the few seconds, when he had faced the pistol barrel as he came down the bank’s steps, and Mikhail had not thrust forward to stand in the way of the aim. They said, the bodyguards, that they were not ‘bullet-catchers’. Could remember the hammer blow in his upper arm, the pain, losing the ability to stand, and then, only then, Mikhail had reacted. The memory was clear. Mikhail had fired, killed, had had the look of pride, satisfaction, triumph, had picked up the spent cartridge cases from his weapon, then had gone to the man who paid him, knelt and examined the wound. Josef Goldmann told a different story.