Yes, Dennis had a high regard for the quality of KGB-trained operatives. Hadn’t seen them, which didn’t mean they weren’t there on the ground.
He walked slowly. The guv’nor would have believed him, but might have said the stakes were too high to call off the operation. Never could tell with the guv’nor, but at least Dennis would have been believed.
Dennis went the far way round the alleys and across the square, then doubled back and tried to estimate where the mafiya man and the agent would be, and whether a minimal part of a box was in place, but held out few hopes for it. A box — if it was in London, run by Thames House and the target was a bloody jihadist — would have involved two cars and a motorcycle, a dozen on the ground sealing the target inside the box. His pace quickened, didn’t want to go faster but couldn’t help himself, and his stride lengthened. It was his hatred of a situation when he didn’t have an eyeball and neither did Adrian.
He passed a wedding party, in their best gear, men in suits and the girls in smart frocks. They had taken over a little square and there was a raised flowerbed in which the ground was covered with wood chips, the pruned rosebushes were not yet in bud, but the party had brought bouquets and laid them on the chips. With the flowers were brightly wrapped packages. New lives starting, hope and optimism, bloody good news.
The squawk came into his ear. ‘To Control. I have an eyeball, on the wall, west from the barbican. C One, out.’
He gasped. Felt his knees weaken, turn to jelly. He thought it a good voice in his ear, authoritative and without bullshit. Should have been enjoying it — adrenaline and the chase, that crap — and was not. Just felt raw relief that they had, again, an eyeball. But couldn’t say for how long the game would be played out.
The dog alerted him. It came from its place by the lit stove and bounded to the closed door. It lifted its head, hackles erect, and its bark deafened him. Then its paws, claws out, raked the door. The barking died and was replaced by a soft, menacing growl that came from deep in its throat.
He listened.
When he heard the car, which the dog had heard a half-minute before, Tadeuz Komiski started up from his chair. He had not eaten that day, or the one before. He swayed on his feet and had to lean on the table to steady himself. The dusk had come early that evening, brought on by the raincloud over the forest, and he had no light on in his home. Nor had he drunk any coffee or tea, only water. A car approached. He sensed it made slow progress and was driven carefully because the ruts in the track were deep and rain-filled. It would have tried to find a route at the track’s sides.
Lights hit the window beside the bolted and locked door, and the dog renewed its frantic barking.
He groped forward, keeping to the shadows beyond the throw of the car’s headlights, and reached the window. The car edged forward, swerving. The lights dipped and bucked. He made his way back across the room to the table and lifted his broken shotgun. He checked and, from the lights spearing inside, could see that both barrels were loaded. He snapped the gun shut. He held it loosely and went forward to take his position against the wall beside the window.
The car braked. The lights were steady, then switched off. Darkness plunged around him.
A door groaned open, then slammed, and he heard the squelch of a footfall on the sodden ground as someone came to the door of his home. His finger was on the guard of the trigger. The dog had gone quiet but he could feel its bulk against his leg and hear the wheeze of its breathing. He sensed it was coiled, ready to spring, if the door should be forced. He had known that one night, under cover of darkness, they would come. The curse afflicting him had demanded they would come because of what he had done.
The door was rapped. Not hard, not with aggression. He felt a lessening of the fear that had been with him since a man had seemed to search for a grave, then sat against a tree and watched his home. The knock was repeated. He stayed quiet, and the dog hissed in defiance but did not bark.
Then the voice he knew: ‘Tadeuz … Are you there, Tadeuz?’
He didn’t answer but lowered the gun’s barrels until they pointed at the floor.
He thought the voice sounded nervous. ‘Tadeuz … I think you’re inside. It’s me, Tadeuz, Father Jerzy. Please, Tadeuz, answer if you’re there.’
Outside, beyond the door, the priest would have heard the dog growl. He went to the table, broke the shotgun and placed it, angled and ugly, on the old newspapers there.
‘I think you’re there, Tadeuz. Let me in.’
Tadeuz Komiski unbolted and unlocked the door, then murmured into the ear of his dog, which slunk, belly low, to the place beside the stove. He opened the door. He saw only the silhouetted outline of the priest’s shoulders and head. A match was struck, held up by the priest, and in his other hand a plastic bag hung heavily with the weight of its contents.
‘Are you not well, Tadeuz? Why no light? Are you ill?’
He scurried back. He put a paper strip into the stove, and moved it sharply until it found embers and caught, then used it to light the oil lamp. Now he saw the priest look around and grimace in horror, shock, disgust. His nose twitched and his lip curled.
‘This is no way to live, Tadeuz, with this smell, in the dark. It’s wrong to live like this, and not necessary.’
Father Jerzy peered at the sink. In it were the dishes that Tadeuz had not washed, and he had not eaten for the whole of that day or the previous one.
‘Do you have any food in your house, Tadeuz?’
He shook his head, and felt that the lamplight caught his shame.
‘Can you make coffee, Tadeuz?’
He gestured with his hands, helpless, that he had none.
The priest wiped the seat of a chair and sat on it. He reached across the table, pushed the shotgun carefully aside, so that its barrel was aimed at the window, then laid the plastic bag by the stock. He had a cheerful face, weathered, and his cheeks shone with scrubbed cleanliness. He took a small paper bag from his coat pocket and lifted out two biscuits, then held out his hand flat with the biscuits on the palm. The dog came to him and wolfed them, then laid its head on his lap.
‘You didn’t come, Tadeuz. You didn’t bring us the wood you usually bring. To be frank, we have little wood at the church house, and next Sunday we’ll have used the last in the boiler. There’s an old saying, Tadeuz: “If the mountain will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet must go to the mountain.” I say that in jest because you’re not a mountain and I’m most certainly not Mahomet. I thought you were not well, that you hadn’t the strength to cut, haul and split wood, so I came to find out.’
He didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing, but hung his head. The priest’s hand fondled the dog’s neck.
‘I had Magda ask in the shop. I didn’t think you would have gone there and not brought us the wood. Magda confirmed that you hadn’t been in. That’s why I believed you were ill, and that you’d have no food. Magda did this for you.’
The plastic bag was opened. A pie was shown to him, and gravy had run down its tinfoil tray. To show his gratitude, Tadeuz Komiski dropped his head.
‘But you’re not ill, not in body … Tadeuz, I expected to find you had suffered an injury or an accident, or had pneumonia. I look at you, the darkness you keep and the weapon close to you, and what confronts me is a great sadness about you. Tadeuz, I’m a priest and you have no obligation to answer me, but have you done wrong? Why are you hiding from the world?’
He gazed with longing at the pie made for him by Magda, housekeeper to Father Jerzy, and saw the strong hands gentle at the dog’s neck. Another biscuit was placed in the slobbering mouth.