He did not tell them about Ruslan or Dmitri’s death. He did not tell them that he was sickened by the cruelty he’d witnessed on both sides of the divide. After that, they left him. Ten minutes later he was escorted to a room with a bed and en suite facilities. Having never been to university, he imagined this was what a room in a hall of residence would be like—apart from the plainclothes officer standing outside with a loaded Glock.
Stripping off, he washed and slipped between the sheets. Exhausted, he thought he’d fall asleep immediately. He didn’t. His brain refused to shut up. He was thinking about Katya. Spilling his guts to the security service officers had disturbed his feelings. Every time he turned over he saw her eyes, her face, that smile. Try as he may, he could not get her out of his head or from under his skin. He doubted he would. Next, he started thinking about Graham Darke, wondering how he would adjust to being a British citizen again, considering how weird it must be to be back among billboards and technology, the cult of celebrity, women with make-up and careers, modern living with all its joys and hardships and temptations. How different it would seem from life in the mountains where life and death coexisted in such close proximity.
He must have fallen asleep because the next he knew someone was knocking at his door. Scrabbling into his clothes, he called out that it was okay to come inside. A sweet-faced brunette walked in, carrying breakfast: full English with a pot of tea. He could have kissed her. When he asked her the time, she answered in German.
‘I don’t understand.’
When he tried again in German, she smiled and closed the door behind her.
He ate like a starving wolf then made use of the bathroom facilities. He spent a long time under the shower. Dressed again, and with Teutonic timing, the door opened and Fazan walked in. His expression pale and grave, he asked Tallis to accompany him. Tallis’s immediate concern was for Darke. He voiced it.
‘He’s fine. Nothing to worry about,’ Fazan said crisply.
Tallis followed him down a light and airy corridor, nice prints on the walls, to a small room decked out like a waiting room in a private hospital. There were chairs, a low table with German and English magazines, a water dispenser in the corner and a fish tank with lots of electric blue fish haring about. The only thing that was missing was piped music. Darke was already inside, sitting down on a squashy leather armchair. He looked up as Tallis entered.
‘What did you reckon to room service?’
‘Not bad,’ Tallis said, taking a seat next to him. ‘So what’s happening?’
‘Looks like we’re being spirited away.’
‘This going to be a rerun of Funeral in Berlin?’
Darke smiled one of those smiles that don’t quite match the expression in the eyes. Fazan, Tallis noticed, ignored the remark. A nerve in his face was pulsing slightly. He wondered what had happened to upset him.
‘We’re flying you to London,’ Fazan said. Good news, Tallis thought, and probably the reason Fazan was out of sorts. Up until that moment he’d thought it was his show to run. The man had, in effect, been upstaged. ‘Along with several intelligence officers, Numerov will be travelling on the same flight,’ Fazan added.
The Russian professor claiming political asylum, Tallis reminded himself. He envisaged Learjets flying in the dead of night from private British or American military airbases. With the Russian embassy round the corner, it was probably necessary to move Numerov with speed. If the Russians could brazenly bump off a Russian dissident in the middle of a London street, they’d have no problem with popping round the corner and doing the same in Berlin. Tallis sensed the change in temperature. Suddenly the atmosphere had altered as if there was static in the air. This was getting interesting. He began to consider what, if anything, Numerov had disclosed. He glanced at Darke but his expression was vacant and unreadable.
‘Needless to say,’ Fazan said, ‘the details and circumstances of your trip will not be discussed. You will, to all intents and purposes, be ordinary British passengers.’
As it turned out, it was more ordinary than even Tallis had imagined. Having been driven to Tegel airport, Berlin’s nearest and busiest airport, they boarded a scheduled British Airways flight in broad daylight, the avoidance of passport control and easy passage through what seemed to be a VIP lounge the only major irregularities. Numerov, who arrived separately with his minders, was ushered into the same suite. He was tall by Russian standards, late fifties with ascetic features. On his nose, which looked as though it had been broken at some stage in his life and reset badly, he wore a pair of spectacles. He had dark hair with very little grey. Similarly, the stubble on his chin was also dark. He looked more Eric Clapton than an academic, Tallis thought, wondering what was travelling through his mind at that moment. Had he fallen out with his superiors, and with Ivanov? Did he have strong ideological objections? Was he an agent sent to infiltrate? And how high up the food chain, are you? Tallis wondered, unable to judge anything from the man’s demeanour, which seemed calm, cool and untroubled. And if you are who you say you are, what have you left behind? A wife, family, lover, friends, everything you’ve ever known?
Their flight was called. Nobody spoke. Nobody made eye contact. They boarded in silence. Rather than coming across as normal and ordinary, they must have seemed a socially inept lot to their fellow passengers, Tallis thought. In a bid to lighten the tone, he muttered to Darke about their host’s unstinting generosity. Darke flicked a smile and told him it was connected to cuts in funding. Same old.
As soon as they landed at Heathrow, they followed the same outgoing procedure in reverse except, this time, there were three cars to meet them.
‘End of the road,’ Darke said. ‘You go your way. I go mine.’
‘I don’t think—’
‘Sir,’ one of the blokes assigned to Tallis cut in. ‘It’s time we left.’
And with no time for Graham Darke to answer or say goodbye, all Tallis could do was look over his shoulder and watch helplessly as Darke, without so much as a backward glance, and Numerov were driven away.
They took him to a safe house, a modern executive home on a mid-range housing estate outside London. Asim was there. He smiled warmly. ‘I’m sorry about all this cloak-and-dagger stuff. Not really my style.’
‘I can tell.’ Tallis smiled back. ‘This isn’t how we normally do business.’
‘I know, and I apologise.’
‘I guess this is what happens when I get lent to other agencies,’ Tallis said, sanguine.
‘’Fraid so. I know it’s a bore, but we need to run through everything.’
‘I already did that in Berlin.’
‘I know. If it’s any consolation, your debrief is with me this time.’
Tallis laughed. ‘No consolation at all.’
‘How did you find Fazan?’ Asim said. His eyes were level with Tallis’s. There was no trace of guile in his voice, yet the slight tic in his left eyebrow raised Tallis’s suspicion.
‘Is this a trick question?’
‘Not at all. I just wondered how he measured?’
Measured in what way? Tallis thought. By comparison to you? That surely wasn’t what Asim had meant. ‘Asim, is there something you’re holding back, something you think I’d like to know?’ Tallis’s smile was nimble. He knew how to play his handler. The guy was not immune to humour.
Asim flashed a mischievous grin in return, looked at his watch. ‘Think we should start, don’t you?’
For three days he was questioned. For three days he revisited old ground. He told Asim everything, including the fact he’d gone off piste to search for Ruslan Maisakov. Asim listened quietly for the most part, his expression unchanging, giving no indication what was of interest to him and what was not. Tallis imagined that Asim would match his account with his previous one and see if there were discrepancies in his statement. After he finished, Asim returned to the subject of Darke, for whom Tallis only had praise.
‘Think he’ll be able to adjust?�
�� Asim said.
‘People do.’ Tallis shrugged. The last thing his friend needed was the security services breathing down his neck, worrying if he was about to either top himself or go off on a crime spree. And yet it was a good question. A proportion, admittedly mostly soldiers, went off the rails when returned to civvy street. Was Darke in the same league? However hard Tallis tried, he couldn’t shake off the feeling that Darke was not the individual he’d thought he was. ‘Best thing for him would be take a break and get back in the field.’ With a face so badly scarred it wouldn’t be that easy, he suddenly realised. ‘He’s committed to the service,’ he said, clearing his voice slightly. ‘I saw that for myself.’
‘It’s alright, Tallis,’ Asim assured him. ‘We no longer consider Darke a suspect in the Moscow killings.’
‘Glad to hear it.’
‘Neither do we suspect Fazan.’
‘What?’ Tallis was astounded.
‘You seriously think I’d go along with that type of information, unquestioning, allow one of my best people to put their life at risk without checking out my source? Thing is, when I did, I got rather more than I bargained for. It’s no accident that Christian Fazan was, for many years, stationed in Moscow.’
‘Yeah?’ Tallis felt bewildered.
‘Twenty-six years ago and five years before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Fazan was a lowly intelligence officer on his first mission. Using the assumed name of Edward Rose, his brief was to befriend a Russian journalist by the name of Malika Motova. Motova moved in what was considered dissident circles, artists, playwrights, and the kind of people that get a bullet in the head at the first sign of revolution. Motova was important to MI6 because she was in a relationship with a KGB officer considered to be on the up.’
‘She was being used?’
‘She was. Unfortunately, Motova got sussed. As I said, she was entirely innocent and had no idea that she was a pawn in a dangerous game. Most unfortunately, the Russian authorities didn’t see it that way. To cut a long story short, Motova died of a heart attack in a transit prison. Fazan was not happy.’
‘And let me guess,’ Tallis said. ‘The young KGB officer was none other than Andrei Ivanov.’ That’s why Asim had harboured suspicion, he realised.
Asim agreed with a smile.
‘But setting aside the fictitious name, surely Ivanov would have recognised Fazan?’
Asim slipped a photograph from the file in front of him and handed it to Tallis. ‘Would you?’
‘This is Fazan as a young man?’ Tallis was taken aback. The photograph showed a smooth-skinned, heavy-boned, almost plump-looking individual, handsome featured for sure. The dark blue eyes were more startling and there was tranquillity in his expression, serenity even, something that had been clearly eroded over the years and replaced by a certain predatoriness.
‘Fazan was taken out of circulation for a decade before being sent back to Moscow,’ Asim said.
‘So Fazan had every reason to exact revenge? Is that what you’re saying?’
‘Not quite,’ Asim said, a cautious light in his eyes. ‘Fazan is a professional, dedicated to his career. He has never once strayed from his brief. As a man he may have harboured murderous designs, but as an intelligence officer he recognised that this is not the way we get things done.’
Tallis arched an eyebrow. Next, Asim would be telling him they didn’t kill people. He’d laughed his socks off when he’d heard a former head of the SIS saying exactly the same at the inquest of Princess Diana. ‘Your point?’
‘It was something I had to factor in and explore. I can assure you Fazan is clean.’
‘So who carried out the murders, who tried to assassinate Ivanov? Please don’t tell me it was a Chechen hit squad.’ Although, come to think of it, nothing would surprise him any more.
‘If I told you, I’d probably have to kill you.’ Asim was smiling, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t serious. Tallis felt vaguely unsettled.
‘I guess we’ve upset a lot of people.’
Asim leant back in the chair, stretching his legs out, cracking his knuckles. He was enjoying the thrill of the chase, Tallis recognised. ‘One in particular. Think I need to catch some fresh air,’ Asim said, suddenly standing up. ‘You might want to listen to some music while I’m gone, help you relax. There’s a CD over by the player, if you’re interested.’
As soon as the door closed, Tallis got up and retrieved the CD, which was in a plain transparent case with no writing or label attached. Tallis switched on the player, put the CD into the drawer, and pressed Play. At first there was nothing but scratchy silence and then a voice, a curious hybrid of Russian-accented English with a hint of American.
‘We have always maintained special departments, as you know, departments dedicated to technology and surveillance, abduction and assassination.’
‘And you are stating that the murders that have taken place in Moscow, including the attempt on the Prime Minister’s life, was the work of a special department?’ an English voice cut in.
‘Why, yes.’
‘It wasn’t a rogue outfit, or made up of old diehards loyal to the former KGB?’
‘An irrelevant question,’ the Russian said, testy. ‘A change of name does not denote a change of operation or tactics. Once you become an agent, KGB or FSB, you have a job for life. And the FSB never abandons its operatives.’
‘I’m not quite clear on this,’ the English voice cut in again. ‘Are you saying this was a legitimate operation, that the State was aware of the plan?’
‘I tell you this was a project that was fashioned within the walls of the Kremlin itself. The orders came from the very top. The murders of fellow countrymen were all part of a well-orchestrated plot.’
‘I’m confused. Are you saying that the orders came from the new President?’
Numerov burst out laughing. ‘The very top, I said. Just because we have a new man at the helm does not mean there’s been a change in the power structure. Ivanov is still in charge.’
‘Alright,’ the questioner said smoothly. ‘How do you explain the attempt to kill Andrei Ivanov? If as you say the orders came from Ivanov, why would he order his own death?’
‘He didn’t.’ The Russian let out another raucous laugh. ‘It was bluff, never designed to happen. The bullet was a blank. The “shooter” was never found.’
‘And Dr Gaziev?’
‘Nothing more than, how do you say, the fall guy? It was happy coincidence that certain wings of the press were demonstrating about the Chechen crisis, and the fool doctor was a gift, which was spontaneously exploited.’
Tallis heard the interviewer cough and clear his throat. Numerov began speaking again.
‘Why do you think the President was so unexpectedly taken ill? It meant our larger-than-life Prime Minister was able to step in and become the so-called target. That way, as well as engendering outrage, he won universal sympathy. When he left the country for a recuperative break after his ordeal, he had all the good wishes and blessings of the Russian people.’
‘Alright, but help me out with the motivation.’
‘You are asking me to explain Andrei Ivanov’s thinking?’
This was followed by a marked pause. ‘To his mind, Ivanov believes he is making Russia strong again, imbuing it with a sense of national pride, diverting democracy to dictatorship. Notwithstanding his recent foray into South Ossetia, he has already lost Georgia and Belarus. As for the Ukraine, they have a pro-Western stance. Who will be next? Dagestan? Added to that, he has the West, as he sees it, clamouring at his borders. To have another troublesome state flexing its muscles and claiming independence was a step too far.’
‘But the Russians have only recently ended their operations in Chechnya.’
Numerov let out another laugh. ‘Work there will never be ended. Ivanov’s plot was specifically designed to stir up political unrest and hatred so that a third and final assault on Chechnya would go unopposed, not simply by his own people but by the
West.’
‘Since when did Ivanov care about the West?’
‘He cares very much, and the West has made it easy for him. Your so-called war on terror plays nicely into his hands. If you can attack the Muslims, why shouldn’t he? And, believe me, his repugnance for the Chechens as a race, as a creed, is of psychotic proportions.’
Another pause.
‘Tell me about Lieutenant Ilya Simaev again.’
‘Musa’s contact?’ the Russian said. He was referring to Darke’s contact, Tallis registered. ‘He was arrested eight months ago. That’s when Musa’s true identity was discovered. In spite of the revelation, it was decided to sit on the information and use it at a later date. It is good, is it not, as you English say, to keep one’s powder dry?’
‘They didn’t think to put Simaev back in the game, let Musa, or rather Graham Darke, run?’
‘Too late for that. One cannot send a corpse into the field.’
‘Simaev was killed?’
‘He died under interrogation.’
‘For what purpose does the Kremlin intend to use the information?’
Again the Russian laughed. ‘They already used it.’
‘How?’
‘By telling your man, Fazan, that Musa had gone rogue, that he was responsible for the killings in Moscow.’
‘You mean the intelligence passed on to Christian Fazan?’
‘Absolutely. The so-called forensic evidence for one of the hits was entire fabrication. I think you seriously underestimate Ivanov. Something you should know…’ The Russian broke off to sneeze and blow his nose. ‘It’s a little known and unreported fact that when Ivanov was a young officer he had a serious relationship with a woman who turned out to have a Chechen mother. He once boasted to me personally that he’d used her to try and entrap a suspected British agent and had her arrested on a trumped-up charge. She was interrogated at Lubyanka, usual treatment—sleep deprivation, physical and mental abuse and the forced use of drugs, including Haloperidol. It has a nasty side effect of inducing cardiac arrest. As a result of her treatment by the State, she, too, died. That’s how much he hates the Chechens, and he will use anything he can to silence opposition to his policy towards them.’
Land of Ghosts Page 29
