An Agent of Deceit

by Chris Morgan Jones

  Onder had met Malin three times, it turned out, once socially, and on each occasion had been impressed by his reluctance to engage with the world; the world, it seemed, was obliged to engage with him. He was therefore a difficult man to read – Onder had seldom met anyone so difficult. But from his behaviour he had eventually deduced certain things. He was obstinate; he cared little for his reputation in the West, whose opinion was nothing to him; but for all his apparent immobility he made decisions quickly and shrewdly, and was probably a more subtle and delicate thinker than his rather brutish persona would suggest. What drove him, though, was unknowable. ‘My guess’, said Onder, ‘is that he does everything for Russia, and for himself. Which is more dear to him I cannot say.’

  Lock, meanwhile, was an unlikely associate. Onder thought him competent, but not talented; vain; both flattered and cowed by the company he kept.

  ‘What you must understand,’ said Onder, leaning forward and tapping out the important words with a finger on his desk, ‘is that Malin never expected to be so big. Every Russian is corrupt according to his station in life. If you are a schoolteacher, you sell grades. If you are a fishmonger, you give the best fish to those who can do something for you in return. Malin expected to be a mid-level technocrat taking a few million a year from the odd opportunity here and there. But he has managed to make himself a player and now it’s hundreds of millions, maybe billions. And for this he has Lock.’ He gave a short laugh. ‘Lock is a great man for millions, but for billions he’s out of his depth. But he’s convinced himself somehow he belongs. It’s almost funny. And Malin’s not stupid, not at all – but he can’t change Lock. They cannot rewrite that story. They cannot divorce. It’s worse than a bad marriage.’ Onder laughed at his own joke.

  ‘So what’s wrong with Lock? Why can’t he cut it?’

  ‘Listen, I may be wrong about him. He is smart enough, a decent lawyer, but he just doesn’t look the part.’ Onder thought for a moment, all the while looking hard at Webster. ‘Do you know what it is? He’s not a shit. He’s too nice. He is deluded, yes, petty probably, limited, but not a shit. To survive in that world you have to be really hard or really stupid. Lock is pretty clever and soft. Much too soft. He would like to be a part of that world but deep down he doesn’t believe it. Maybe not even that deep.’

  Webster nodded; this rang true. Experience told him that few of the Locks of this world had complete faith in their own myth. Another question sat waiting to be aired, and for a moment he considered whether he should ask it. Perhaps it simply wasn’t relevant.

  ‘How nasty is Malin?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘How ruthless?’

  ‘You mean, does he hurt people?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Onder smiled and thought. ‘To protect himself, maybe. To get ahead, I doubt he has needed to. He’s of the old school. I shouldn’t think he fears justice.’

  A sensible, balanced answer. In truth it was no more than Webster knew already.

  They talked a little more, but he had enough. He knew now that this case would come down not to a story, a lead, a document, but to a man. It all came down to Lock. He was Malin’s great weakness. Turn him, and you would not only have the perfect witness but leave Malin unmanned and exposed.

  ‘Would you be prepared to be a witness?’ Webster asked Onder when they were done.

  Onder looked at him and thought for a moment. ‘Against Malin, yes. For Tourna, I am not sure. Maybe. Let me think.’

  ‘And how about doing a little work for me?’

  Onder gave another smile, and held it for a moment. ‘Have you ever investigated me?’

  ‘Remarkably, no. Why?’

  ‘I was thinking that then I could be subject, client and source. A true honour that would be. What did you have in mind?’

  ‘I might like you to have a word with Richard Lock.’

  One of the things that Webster enjoyed about no longer being a journalist, and not being a proper spy, was that he spent time with his family. He guarded that time diligently. Hammer was always on call; his phone was never switched off. He liked nothing better than to be called in the middle of the night because that meant something interesting was happening. But Webster would happily turn his phone off at six o’clock every evening and leave it in some dark drawer all weekend. Eventually Hammer had forced him to have it switched on every day until nine, Webster reluctantly conceding that if a client was good enough to give you money he had a right to talk to you when he wanted. But he still resented having to answer the thing, as he resented client dinners or breakfast meetings or trips that ate into weekends. He had an old-fashioned, sometimes indignant sense of the distinction between work and rest.

  When his phone rang that Sunday, then, he was inclined not to answer it. The clear, cold weather of the previous two days had given way to low, dark cloud and a closeness that Webster found enervating. He, Elsa and the children were in the playground. Daniel was taking handfuls of wood-chippings from under the climbing frame and putting them in three neat piles by a bench. He had shed his coat and was going about his work with concentration, squatting on his thick toddler’s legs, standing, walking, squatting again. Webster watched him, fascinated by his determination. That was proper work. Elsa was on the see-saw, forcing her seat abruptly into the ground so that Nancy lifted clear off hers into the air. Nancy laughed each time, a conspiratorial chuckle.

  His phone buzzed in his pocket. The caller came up as unknown and in that moment he imagined half a dozen conversations he didn’t want to have. Apologizing to Elsa he walked a few feet away and answered.

  ‘Ben Webster.’

  ‘Mr Webster, hello, this is Philip on security. We’ve had a call to the main Ikertu number asking for you. We didn’t give your number out, sir, obviously, but perhaps you’d like to return it.’

  ‘Thank you, Philip. What was the name?’

  ‘A Mr Prock, sir. P-R-O-C-K. He left a number. German, I think.’

  ‘Thanks. I’ll take it.’ Philip gave him the number, twice, slowly. Webster keyed it into his phone.

  Prock. Why would Prock call? If he had Webster’s name then Gerstman must have given it to him: if he was calling Ikertu about anything else he wouldn’t have known to ask for him by name. Perhaps he knew something that Gerstman wasn’t prepared to disclose; perhaps he was going to warn him off. Perhaps he had a job for him. That wouldn’t have been unusual.

  Webster gestured to Elsa that he had to make a call and left the playground. The line rang several times before Prock picked up.

  ‘Grüss Gott. Prock.’

  ‘Mr Prock this is Ben Webster. You’ve been trying to reach me.’

  ‘Wait a moment.’

  Webster could hear Prock’s hand over the receiver and the muffled noise of a door closing.

  ‘Mr Webster.’ Prock had a tenor voice with a thin, constricted tone, as if he was forcing out the words. His accent was demonstrative, even a little theatrical: Austrian, Webster thought. ‘I am with Nina Gerstman at the moment, Mr Webster. Does that suggest anything to you?’

  Webster answered honestly that it did not.

  ‘I have been with Nina Gerstman from this morning, Mr Webster. She is trying to understand who is responsible for the death of her husband.’ Prock paused. Webster, off balance, said nothing, his mind empty of everything but a distant, closing fear. ‘Because somebody is, and I think it is you. I think it is you, Mr Webster. I have not told her, because I do not want her to know that something so trivial,’ Prock, quiet before, almost shouted the word, ‘so pointless, could have made her husband to die. What do you think, Mr Webster?’ Quietly again now. ‘What do you think?’

  Webster felt a sharp pain in his right temple. He had been pacing but now he stopped and looked down at the ground. Pinching his eyes closed with his hand he saw Gerstman on his back, immaculate in a suit, his white shirt-collar red with blood.

  ‘I don’t understand you. What happened?’

 
‘You don’t know what happened? I thought you knew everything that happened. I thought that was your job.’ The line was quiet for a moment. ‘You don’t know? Let me tell you then. Two weeks ago, you threatened Dmitry Gerstman to meet with you. This morning, in Budapest, he was killed. The rest you will run off and discover, no doubt. You see, Mr Webster? You don’t know everything. Not at all. You know nothing. And what you didn’t know about Dmitry Gerstman has killed him. It was you who did this. It was you who pushed him. I wanted you to know.’

  Webster opened his eyes. A group of runners in training, each with a laden backpack, sprinted up the steepest part of Primrose Hill, their feet slipping in the mud. Tarmac paths divided the grass, and where they crossed wrought-iron lamp posts stood, black and upright. His thoughts were thick but the world around unnervingly crisp. He could feel dread and guilt in his throat. But even as he feared, somehow, that Prock was right, he could feel a fragile sense of injustice asserting itself.

  ‘I’m sorry. We barely spoke.’

  ‘That was all it took.’

  There was silence between them.

  ‘Now,’ said Prock. ‘I cannot prosecute you. I cannot sue you. But I can make sure you understand. I will let your conscience do the work. Goodbye.’ The line went dead.

  Webster felt hollow. He looked back at the playground, now a few hundred yards away, and began to walk towards it, unsurely, like a man who has just been knocked down.

  As he walked through the gate he saw Elsa crouching down by Daniel, who was in tears, Elsa holding a handkerchief to his nose.

  ‘There you are,’ said Elsa. ‘Can you take over? Nancy wants me to push her.’ She stood up with Daniel’s hand in hers. ‘What’s wrong? You look white.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I . . . Christ, I . . .’

  ‘What is it?’ She looked at him, worried.

  ‘The man I went to Berlin to see . . .’ He hesitated, not knowing how to say it.

  ‘The one who wouldn’t talk?’

  Webster nodded. ‘He’s dead. That was his partner. He wanted to tell me.’

  ‘Jesus. How?’

  ‘He didn’t say.’

  ‘Come here.’ She took his hand and pulled him to her; he rested his head against hers for a moment. Daniel gave a little whimpering noise. ‘That’s quite a shock. Look, let’s go home. You need a cup of tea.’

  He pulled back a little and looked at her. ‘Thanks, baby, but . . . I should see Ike. He was saying that it’s my fault.’

  ‘Ike?’

  ‘No, Christ no. The call. I’m sorry. It’s just . . . He seemed to think that if I hadn’t been to see him he’d still be alive.’

  ‘Daniel, shush – just a minute. But that’s nonsense. You don’t even know how he died.’

  ‘I don’t. I don’t know. I need to see Ike. I’m sorry. I . . . Can you manage here?’

  ‘Of course. Why don’t we drive?’

  ‘It’s OK. I think I’ll walk. Will you be OK?’

  She took his hand again. ‘What if he’s not there?’

  ‘He’ll be there.’

  ‘All right. Be careful. And don’t walk under a truck, for God’s sake.’ She looked at him, gripped his hand and then let go.

  It takes half an hour, more or less, to walk from Primrose Hill to Well Walk in Hampstead. For all his urgent need to understand what had happened, Webster walked slowly, and it took him forty minutes. He wanted to recover himself before he got to Hammer’s house, and to make some calls. First, as he walked along, he used his phone to search the Internet for any reporting of Gerstman’s death. Nothing. He thought the newswires might have had it by now. Then he called Istvan in Budapest, and asked him to find out what he could from his former colleagues in the police. He called people in Germany to see whether news had reached there. Then he searched his mind for others to phone, as if by casting as many lines as possible he could improve the chances of discovering that he wasn’t to blame. But there was no one else. He would simply have to wait.

  Prock’s theory wasn’t logical, of course. If Gerstman had actually revealed something, if their meeting had been clandestine, if it had been significant in any way, then perhaps it would have made sense. Gerstman must have known things – after all, that was why Webster had wanted to talk to him – but enough to make him dangerous? It seemed so unlikely. This rising anxiety wasn’t logical either, but rise it did. He imagined Gerstman being tailed by sinister men in silhouette and then shot, strangled, poisoned, his tanned skin growing pale and rigid. How slow he had been, how stupid not to realize that violence was lurking so close. That, of course, is what Inessa’s article should have told him. It was a sign that he had almost wilfully ignored.

  Slowly he climbed towards Hampstead through ever older, ever greener streets, the world around him still vivid in the coming dusk, the colours richer in the half dark. In the absence of facts, ideas and images churned inside him. Inessa pulled from her hotel room by uniformed men, Gerstman dragged from his by dark, shapeless forms. They fitted together, these stories; they were of a piece.

  Hammer’s house seemed to glow beside its neighbours. It was a brick building of four storeys, not counting the attic floor where his housekeeper lived; three centuries old, narrow, its bright mortar and clean red bricks gave it an almost colonial look. Most of its windows were Georgian sashes but a large wooden oriel, painted white with three pointed ogee windows, hung over the street from the second floor. The place was much too big for Hammer, thought Webster, who coveted its position and its splendidly entitled views across London to the City. Down in the lowlands of Kensal Green this would be seen as grandeur indeed. He had often wondered whether the whole house was used; he suspected that room after room simply stored old newspapers and books of military campaigns. Did Hammer entertain? Did he have house guests? Surely not.

  Webster gave a brisk rap on the knocker. Hammer answered the door. This was strange because Mary, his housekeeper, usually had Mondays off. Webster, noticing this, wondered irritably what it would take for his habit of trivial observation to switch off.

  ‘Ben. Come in.’ Hammer betrayed the faintest surprise, the merest crease of a frown. Webster was grateful for the plain greeting. He didn’t need to be told that he looked terrible or asked what was the matter. Hammer was wearing a thick cardigan of muddy beige with a shawl collar, his glasses propped on his forehead. He led Webster into his study. Either side of the fireplace was an armchair, and by the further one, on a low table by a cheap spotlight, lay a thick hardback, open and face down. Books lined the walls on old oak shelves and occupied much of the floor in ambitious columns. In between them sat lower piles of newspapers, journals and magazines. There was a fire laid in the hearth but it hadn’t yet been lit and the room was cold. Hammer sat down in his chair and Webster sat opposite, keeping his coat on.

  ‘Where would you like to start?’ asked Hammer, as ever asking the pertinent question. Webster told Hammer about the call, and Gerstman; about the content of their meeting in Berlin, again, as near verbatim as he could, and Prock’s accusation; about Prock’s fury and his own attempts to understand whether there could be anything in it; about the calls he had made to Berlin and Budapest. The ordering of his thoughts made him calmer.

  When he was done Hammer sat for a moment. He took off his glasses and cleaned them with a cloth.

  ‘Mary’s gone to the store,’ he said, putting them back on. ‘We’re out of milk. When she’s back she can make us tea.’ He looked at Webster for a while, then said, ‘Let’s talk about you first. Then the case.’ He took his glasses off and put them on the table by his chair. ‘We’ll find out soon how he died. It may not be murder. But if it is, the method should suggest the motive. If he was shot by a woman, that’s one thing; if he was poisoned with an umbrella, that’s another. Assuming it’s the latter, where does that leave you? Prock’s theory seems to be that Gerstman knew something dangerous, and that he was killed by someone who feared that he was about to reveal it. To you. Or would in tim
e. Let’s say that’s the case. You hardly spoke to the guy, so the people who had him killed were already nervous. The safety was already off. So your role is minimal, almost accidental. It could have been a journalist, it could have been some other investigator – or some chance meeting that got interpreted the wrong way. As yours might have been, incidentally.’ He was leaning back in his chair, his legs crossed, playing with a pencil. ‘They could have been going to kill him anyway, regardless. So you’re the catalyst, at worst, but you’re not the cause, and the whole thing was so delicate you couldn’t possibly know what you were setting off. Like a landmine with a faulty mechanism – you just happened to get too close. Assuming, of course, that you set anything off.’

  He paused, looking at Webster with his plainest expression. ‘So you didn’t kill him. That’s really important, Ben. I’m not just saying that someone else stabbed him or shot him. What killed him was in his life for years before today.’

  ‘I got over-excited and blundered around. For my own benefit. I set it off.’

  ‘Listen, I told you to go. Right? Sooner rather than later. And I won’t feel guilty if Prock turns out to be right. Which, by the way, we’ll probably never know for sure, the way these things go. And you know why? I didn’t introduce Dmitry Gerstman to Konstantin Malin. I didn’t bully him into taking a job that compromised him the moment he took it. I didn’t encourage him to think he could leave that behind. That’s what killed him.’ Hammer smiled. ‘If, of course, that’s what killed him.’

  Webster heard keys turning in the front door lock and at the same time his phone rang. Number unknown. He looked at Hammer and answered it.