by Rennie Airth
‘And?’ Addy prompted her.
‘I never heard any more about him. But it was just around that time that Rose started going off on her own and after a while I began to wonder if she’d met someone – not him, someone else – a man she didn’t want to tell me about. We still saw a lot of each other, but somehow it wasn’t the same. I felt she wasn’t really there any more, with me, I mean …’
Her voice trailed off. She had noticed Addy taking something from her jacket pocket.
‘Malek asked me to show it to you.’ Addy handed the snapshot to her. ‘He thinks it could be Philip Moreau.’
Molly laid the photograph on the table in front of her and bent over it. She sat like that, staring at it, for what seemed like for ever.
‘There’s a resemblance.’ She spoke at last. ‘But I remember he had dark hair, and it was combed differently.’ She went back to gnawing at her lip. Addy held her breath.
‘I’m sorry, Addy.’ Molly looked up. ‘As I say, it looks like him, but I can’t be certain.’
Though she’d been more than half expecting it, Addy still felt a shock on hearing the words. She looked away. How could Rose have been so blind? Why had it taken her so long to see what kind of man she had got involved with? Questions she would never find an answer to now.
Later, when they went upstairs to the drawing room, Molly showed her a copy of the evening paper she had brought back with her. Rose’s picture was on the front page under a headline in heavy black print: Knightsbridge Killings: Two Americans Dead. It was an old photograph, which she recognized from the time when Rose had worked for a New York publisher. The residents of the mews had been interviewed by reporters. Her own name was mentioned: Adelaide Banks, Mrs Carmody’s niece from New York, had been with her aunt when the attack occurred.
‘The press will be looking for you, Addy dear. You must stay here with me. Don’t worry if they find out – I’ll keep them at bay. But we ought to go over to Rose’s house at some point and collect the rest of your things.’
‘The police searched it again this morning,’ Addy said. ‘Malek told me.’
‘What on earth are they looking for?’ Molly was puzzled.
‘I’m not sure.’ Addy bit her lip. She realized she’d been careless. Dave had asked her to keep what he’d told her to herself.
‘Is it something important?’ Molly persisted.
‘Must be, I guess.’ Addy could only shrug. She knew she mustn’t let on about the memory stick. ‘But whatever it is, he said they hadn’t found it.’
TWENTY-TWO
It was after ten before Bela Horvath was finally able to leave his office in Canary Wharf and go home. It had been a trying day, but luckily he lived only ten minutes’ walk away in one of the high-rise apartment blocks that formed part of the sprawling development that had grown up around what until quite recently had been the capital’s tallest building, its commanding presence still dominating the skyline overlooking Limehouse Reach.
Informed overnight of the death of one of the firm’s employees, he had not been surprised when a pair of detectives had called on him that morning wanting to know who Michael Ryker was and what business he’d had in London. Had the circumstances been otherwise, he might have reached out for help in dealing with this troublesome question. In accordance with the firm’s usual practice, he had taken pains to cultivate several high-ranking officers in the Metropolitan Police, a policy that had paid off when it came to smoothing over irregularities in the behaviour of certain of the company’s clients, some of them celebrities with habits that might well have landed less fortunate offenders behind bars, others who were out and out criminals requiring at the very least a blind eye turned to what might be laughingly called their ‘lifestyles’. But murder was murder; there was no getting around it, and Bela knew better than to try appealing to any higher authority to intervene on his behalf.
In the event, the interview had taxed his ingenuity to the limits. He had had to abandon any thought of pleading ignorance: to say he had no idea why one of his employees together with an American lady of apparently spotless reputation should have been fatally stabbed within minutes of each other. The detectives would never have bought it. Better by far to give them a good story. It was a technique he had learned during his time with the CIA. The more complex, the more incredible a tale, the more likely it was to be believed, providing it had a kernel of truth. And since Bela was aware that rumours of the theft of an unusually large sum of money and consequent humiliation of various high-ranking personages in Moscow had been circulating in the intelligence community for some time, he knew that the police would have no difficulty in confirming the fact. Once swallowed, the rest was easily digested, and Bela took pride in the fact that most of what he had told the pair was true. If he had sailed close to the wind it was with a certain confidence in his powers. After all, he had done this sort of thing before, and on occasion when his very life had been at stake.
Unfortunately that had not been the end of it. There were still his superiors in New York to be appeased and the calls and messages from that quarter had been flooding in since the early hours. Ryker’s mission to London had been his idea, and while New York had approved it, they were yet to be convinced that the violent fashion in which it had ended could not have been avoided. There was still work to be done in that quarter, and in truth Bela had grown weary of it all, the endless business of explaining and placating. He deserved better, and had good reason to believe that a future as bright and orgiastic as any dreamed up by a paperback author awaited him. But a problem had cropped up overnight, and now the enterprise he was engaged in had run into difficulties. At least he feared so, and was anxious to have his doubts resolved at the earliest possible moment.
It was something of a relief then to put the worries behind him for a while at least and take refuge in his apartment, which was on the tenth floor of a fifteen-storey block, to pour himself a glass of palinka – the fruit brandy for which the country of his birth was famed, and from the taste of which he had never weaned himself – and then to open the glass doors that gave on to a small balcony, where he could catch a glimpse of the river below and the great expanse of lights beyond it. Standing on the small deck with the world spread out at his feet he found – as was so often the case these days – that his thoughts were straying back to the past, to the strange course his life had taken; to the winding road it would have been impossible to foresee that had brought him to this spot.
Born in a thatched cottage in the middle of the great Hungarian plain, he had been the fourth of four sons of a farmer whose losing battle with the soil had condemned his family to a life of penury and whose leaky ship had only been kept afloat by his wife, Bela’s mother, a woman of iron will, whose advice to her last son had been to leave the village where they dwelt for good and seek his fortune elsewhere. Though aged only fifteen, he had contrived to live by his wits thereafter, first as a street boy and sometime thief in Budapest, later as the protégé – though discovery might have been a better word – of an American diplomat who Bela only later learned was contracted to the CIA. It was this man who had spotted the same gifts in the young boy that his mother had divined and by degrees Bela had found himself drawn into the secret world, which, even now, though he had finally abandoned it for another, better paid profession, he still felt part of.
His life had taken an eventful turn and, in the years that followed, he had risked it more than once in the service of his new masters, acquiring as he grew older a variety of skills and the mastery of several languages. Something of an exotic figure among the purposely colourless ranks of the monk-like community he had joined, he’d become known for his unorthodox methods and something more valuable: a cool head in a crisis. Yet though he had prospered, eventually obtaining American citizenship along with a senior position on the East European desk at Langley, he had always known that he was not one of them – not in their eyes – he was ‘our Magyar’, an interesting character with a fa
scinating background. He knew for a fact that many of them dined out on stories about him.
And so finally he had had enough and taken his leave of the Company with a capital C, as it was known, to enter the private sector, where his particular talents were valued at least as highly as before, but better rewarded, and again he had prospered. But it was not enough. Simply put, he had yearned to rise higher, so high in fact that one day he could look down on them, the ones who in spite of all he had achieved continued to patronize him, their pet ‘Magyar’, the ones who had never entirely trusted him and let him know it: the ones who, one day from a great height, he would finally piss on.
But now the situation had changed. Or had it? He would soon find out.
Quitting the balcony where the cold air had begun to bite, Bela went back into the sitting room and refilled his glass, pausing to lift it in a silent toast to a photograph that stood on a glass-topped table next to the drinks cabinet and bore the grainy black-and-white image of a woman with thinning hair and a set jaw. It was his only memento of his mother and of far greater importance to him than the photograph that stood beside it of his late wife, a pale blonde lady of impeccable WASP lineage who Bela had thought, in his innocence, might gain him access to the private sanctums of the great from which he had always been excluded. The unlucky woman had contracted cancer at an early age and died after only ten years of what had been in all senses a barren marriage.
He looked at his watch: it was ten thirty. He was expecting a visitor and wanted to be ready for their meeting. Quitting the sitting room for a moment, he went into his study next door and retrieved a Glock pistol from the top drawer of his desk. A slimline model, it felt light in its polymer casing and fitted easily into his jacket pocket. It was simply a precaution, he didn’t expect to have to use it, but given the unpredictable nature of his late-night caller it was good to be prepared. As he shut the drawer, the house telephone rang. He picked up the receiver.
‘Yes?’
‘There’s a gentleman to see you, sir.’ It was the night porter calling from the lobby downstairs. ‘A Mr Zhukov.’
‘Send him up.’
A smile crossed Bela’s lips. His visitor was known for his peculiar sense of humour and perhaps the name of a famous Soviet war hero appealed to his taste for the absurd. He went out into the hall and unlocked the door, leaving it open just a crack. Then he returned to the sitting room and took a seat in an armchair, one of a pair facing each other. Presently he heard the front door shut, then footsteps. A man, not immediately recognizable, entered the room. Dressed all in black, he had grey hair and Bela saw he was limping.
‘Dear me, how you’ve aged.’ His tone was ironic.
‘You, on the other hand, haven’t changed a bit, Bela. I don’t know how you do it.’
Charon’s smile was warm and engaging.
‘Let’s not beat about the bush. This whole business has turned into a disaster. What can that fool have been thinking of? We needed the woman alive.’ Bela gave vent to his feelings.
Charon shrugged. He had shed his coat and was walking about the room, prowling rather: despite his limp he moved with the languid grace of a big carnivore.
‘I blame myself,’ he said. ‘I should have kept Klepkin on a tighter leash. He was told to restrain her, nothing more. It was just a question of making her see reason. The man’s become an embarrassment. He’s drinking again. The police will be looking for him now. They must have a good description of him.’
While his guest was speaking, Bela had risen and gone to the drinks cabinet.
‘You used to drink whisky,’ he said.
‘And still do.’ Charon seated himself in one of the armchairs. He caught his host’s eye. ‘There’s no need for you to worry,’ he said. ‘Klepkin’s convinced we cooked up this scheme on our own. But he’s afraid if he’s arrested, the British police will eventually hand him over to the Russians, not that they would. But try telling Grigor that.’
Bela handed his guest his drink. ‘You have a solution in mind?’ He sat down facing him, and as he looked into Charon’s eyes, he was reminded uncomfortably of a moment years ago when he had glanced into a tiger’s cage – in the Berlin Zoo it was – and found the beast standing close up to the bars regarding him. He had never forgotten its gaze, which was tranquil, impartial, uninterested – and utterly chilling. He shook his head to clear it.
‘A solution?’ Charon examined the contents of his glass. ‘Oh, I think so. It’s time.’ He looked up. ‘Is Chekhov in town?’
‘He is.’
‘With a crew?’
‘Of course.’
‘Do you have his number?’
Bela nodded.
Charon reached into the pocket of his jacket and drew out a piece of paper. Leaning forward, he handed it to the other man.
‘I suggest you give him a call. Say you have it on good authority that his quarry will be at this location at around ten o’clock tomorrow morning.’
‘How can you be sure?’ Bela glanced at the slip of paper.
‘We’re due to meet. I told him I would have some good news for him.’
Bela raised his eyebrows but said nothing. He took his phone from his pocket and tapped out the number. It was quickly answered and he began to speak in Russian. Charon waited patiently until the conversation was ended and Bela had rung off.
‘He naturally wanted to know where the information came from. I said a confidential informant. He wanted to know if we’d made any progress in tracking you down. I said I had alerted all our branches to be on the alert for any sighting of you.’
Charon grunted. He swallowed the last of his whisky.
‘And one other thing you might want to bear in mind.’ Bela put his phone away. ‘It seems your old friend Kimura is here as well. He broke into Mrs Carmody’s house two nights ago. It sounds as though he’s managed to connect her to you.’
‘Now that is unfortunate.’ Charon frowned.
‘He was masked at the time so the police have no description to go on. But all things considered it might be as well if we got this business wrapped up as soon as possible.’
‘I quite agree.’
Bela studied his visitor. ‘The hair comes from a bottle, of course, but the limp … it’s very convincing.’
‘I had a special shoe made with a slight lift. I use it on occasion. Together with the hair and an accent of some sort I can provide any witness with a set of images easy to recall. Elaborate disguises are nearly always a mistake. The trouble is they look like what they are … disguises.’ Charon smiled.
‘Another whisky?’
‘Thank you, no.’
Bela rose and went to the drinks cabinet. He refilled his glass.
‘I suppose I know you better than anyone, though that’s not saying much. But I was thinking about you today, remembering the first time we met. Vienna, was it? You were wearing some rough kind of tweed jacket and one of those hideous Tyrolean hats with a feather in it. You looked like a country bumpkin in town for the day.’
‘I remember … the grafin with the cocaine habit … what became of her, I wonder?’
‘The next time I saw you it was in Bucharest. I don’t remember how you were dressed, only that it took me a full minute to recognize you. I simply didn’t know who you were.’
‘I’ll let you in on a secret, Bela.’ Charon stretched. ‘I have the same problem myself.’
Horvath emptied his glass. It occurred to him that he was drinking too much. Twenty years they had known each other and he had never lost his sense of how dangerous this man was.
‘To business then: I’ve persuaded the police that the stick is in the bank in Zurich. Of course, Klepkin will tell the Russians otherwise and that he doesn’t know where it is. Am I right?’ He glanced at Charon, who nodded. ‘You say it’s here in London? But now that the woman is dead, how can you possibly be sure?’
‘Calm yourself.’ Charon yawned. ‘I’ll have it in my hands shortly.’
&
nbsp; ‘But are you certain? It wasn’t among Mrs Carmody’s belongings. According to my police sources they searched her house again today. They were looking for it. I’m sure they examined her clothes, the linings and so on, and her shoes as well. They’re not fools.’
‘Let me say again: I know where it is.’ Charon took a deep breath. ‘Do you mind if I get some air? It’s rather stuffy in here. The heating …’
He rose and went over to the glassed doors and opened them.
‘What a view!’ He spoke from the balcony. ‘My word, you’ve done well for yourself, Bela. Are you sure you want to give up your job? I’ve always thought it a pity Safe Solutions arrived so late on the scene. If I’d been a younger man I might have applied for a permanent job with them. The things you people get away with! How do you explain it?’
‘That’s easy.’ Horvath’s laugh was hollow. ‘Look at the world – pick a country, any country, ours if you like – look at the people who are running it. You have to wonder what stone they crawled out from under. Believe me, our services are much in demand.’
‘A sobering thought.’
‘Like a billion dollars.’ Bela had risen to pour himself another drink, but then changed his mind and put his glass down. He came over to join Charon. ‘Divided by two of course, which I must admit is a good deal better than three.’
Charon backed off the balcony. Bela moved forward to close the doors.
‘But not as perfect as one.’
Charon’s whisper sounded in his ear.
‘What?’
His voice was cut off as his neck was trapped in the crook of Charon’s arm. As he reached for the pistol in his pocket his wrist was pulled into an iron grip and thrust up behind his back. In a moment he was being forced forward on to the deck outside.
