An Agent of Deceit

by Chris Morgan Jones

  ‘Fucker.’ In Russian. The voice came from the front of the car. The head of the man in the seat turned round to look at him. More words in Russian followed. Lock couldn’t make them out. The smell of vomit reached him and made him gag, but he felt a little clearer, a little more like Richard Lock. In the stink he could smell gin. He raised himself up on his elbows and looked down at his body. He recognized his coat, his new shoes. This was him, all right. The same him.

  Outside the window a city was flowing past. He tried to catch some of it, a shop name, a street sign, but the car was too fast and his eyes too slow; they slipped from point to point. It was definitely a city: the buildings were tall and the streets so wide that sometimes the buildings disappeared from sight. When they slowed he could hear other cars, tyres rolling on wet tarmac, engines sawing through the gears.

  The whole of his head hurt, from his forehead to the nape of his neck. He could sense the shape of his skull enclosing the pain. He tried to think through it. He remembered being in the taxi, with Webster, and walking ahead of him on the ice and seeing Webster fall. Then nothing, just emptiness. An impression of a bare bulb hanging from a cord, but nothing more.

  He needed to know where he was. He forced himself to sit up a little further, his head now resting against the car door, closed his eyes for a moment, and passed out.

  People flitted through his dreams in a feverish, messy procession. No one stayed for long. He could hear their chatter but not grasp what they were saying, even when they were talking to him. Some images stuck: Marina, her back to him, typing on a clanking typewriter a message that he couldn’t read; Oksana in the sea, beckoning; a huge, inflated Malin comical behind a tiny desk; Vika on a beach, pouring water from a plastic watering can onto the sand. Whenever he reached out the scene quickly switched: that lawyer, Beresford, steering him in a panic against a tide of people on some nameless Moscow street; Webster holding up a thick black hair like a piece of wool for him to inspect.

  When he came to, he barely knew that time had passed, let alone how much. He was still; the car was still. The door behind him opened and his head flopped back into space. Then he felt hands on the collar of his coat pull him backwards and up, and he was on his feet, standing on unruly legs. The icy night air braced him, and when he lifted his head he found he was with two men, one short and one tall, both wearing long coats and black caps. Behind him the car locked with a faint beep. The taller man put his arm round his shoulders and together they walked up a frozen pavement. The man was surefooted; Lock knew he wouldn’t slip.

  For the first time Lock looked around him. The street was wide, dark, empty. He felt snow landing softly on his nose, on his cheek. A single car passed. Up ahead a brighter street crossed this one, and he could see traffic and trees lit yellow by the street lamps. The smaller man said something softly in Russian: keep him upright. If they’re happy talking Russian in front of me, Lock thought through the dense fug in his head, I’m not meant to survive.

  He twisted away from the man holding him, trying to free his shoulders and run, but his feet could find no purchase on the ice and the man merely held him up, his powerful arm keeping him from falling. The smaller one, walking slightly ahead, turned and gave the other a taut look.

  Twenty yards from the car the smaller man stopped by a large metal double door set back slightly from the road in a shallow recess. Lock looked up in time to see a massive building above him, several storeys high and as wide as the whole block. Then he felt the strong arm around him pull him in. The smaller man pressed four numbers on a keypad with a gloved hand and the door opened.

  Lock squinted at the sudden, stark light stretching ahead of him down a low, wide corridor. Its white walls were streaked with black marks, and plaster showed in places through flaking paint; the floor was tiled with large linoleum tiles, like a hospital. The men walked Lock, staggering, into the building, his feet skipping clumsily along, trying to keep up. They passed two dark-grey doors with small frosted windows and stopped by a pair of lifts on either side of the corridor. The smaller man pressed the button and called one. By the lifts were two large metal bins on wheels and in them Lock saw a white tangle of sheets like screwed-up paper. There was a smell in the air of soap powder and steam that made him want to lie down in a clean bed in a warm home. He could feel his head lolling on his neck as if he were coming in and out of sleep.

  The lift door opened with a low creak. Lock was shuffled in and propped against a metal wall, the tall man finally taking his arm away. He felt the lift jerk a little under him and presumed that it was going up. The smaller man pulled a tissue from his pocket and looking up at Lock dabbed flecks of vomit from his chin and lapels as a mother might clean up a child. Lock watched him with a puzzled, helpless frown. The man was pallid, brittle-looking, his almost translucent skin showing clearly the shape of the skull beneath. His irises were light grey against milky whites. Straw-coloured hair showed under his cap. He looked vicious but less powerful than his friend.

  The lift trundled up. Sixth floor, seventh. Eventually it stopped on the eighth floor, the last. The small man pulled Lock away from the wall by the arm and the door slid slowly open. From the lift opposite a maid in a pink housecoat, a white maid’s cap on her head, was pulling a trolley laden high with toilet paper and bath caps and slippers in transparent plastic bags. Her back was to Lock and the two Russians and they were forced to wait. As she reversed out onto the landing she turned, saw the three men, and began to smile before she realized that something about them was not right. The small man had his arm linked through Lock’s, and the taller of the two was right behind them, ready to push Lock out of the lift. The maid looked at Lock as if for explanation. In that moment he shrugged himself free of the smaller man’s grip and half lunged, half fell towards the trolley, now blocking the corridor. His shoulder smashed into it, wheeling it round and knocking pens and tiny bottles of shampoo onto the floor. Pushing the trolley end on into the small man, who tottered backwards, off balance, Lock backed into the other lift, clawing at the closing door for support and pressing madly at the bank of buttons. He watched the tall man try to push past the maid; as she crouched to pick up her things he stumbled over her back. The last thing Lock saw through the narrowing crack was the man’s outstretched hand, failing to find a grip.

  It was quiet in the lift. With a gentle jolt it began to descend. Lock leaned against the wall, the metal cold against his temple. His nausea had subsided, but his head throbbed with grim intensity. So this is what had happened to Dmitry. It was possible that he wasn’t even conscious when he died. He may not have known.

  The lift stopped. The fifth floor: in his panic Lock had pressed the wrong button. As the door opened he hit frantically at the ground-floor button, then at the button that closed the doors. It appeared to do nothing; in its own time the door inched back. Above him Lock thought he could hear the metallic clatter of steps being taken three at a time. When the door shut the noise stopped.

  He pinched his eyes with his hand. He had to work out what to do. He felt in his pocket for his phones, but found only the smashed remains of one. Christ. The numbers over the door counted slowly down. No ideas came to him and he struggled to stand. He took deep breaths to steady himself. Two. One. Ground. The corridor was still empty. He set off away from the street door, lurching against the walls. At the end of the corridor he turned right, on instinct, shouldering into a maid carrying an armful of towels. Ahead of him was a pair of wooden swing doors, in each one a small glass pane at head height. He heard a door open behind him and quick steps coming his way; over his shoulder he saw the small man running towards him, his rubber shoes squeaking on the linoleum, his coat open and swinging at his sides. Lock forced his legs to work faster but he couldn’t control them. They gave, as if the tendons had gone, and he crashed through the doors in a running fall, rolling into the room beyond.

  He was on his back. His hands felt carpet under him, and he could hear piano music playing. Lumbering
over onto his knees he looked sluggishly around. People were looking at him: people in deep chairs having drinks, people standing at reception checking in. In the centre of the room, setting off the sober marble and the deep dark wood, was a vase full of tall flowers: lilies, delphiniums. He was in the lobby of a hotel. Still on his knees, Lock glanced behind him. Through the glass in the door he could see the black cap and ghost eyes of the small man, watching him. Lock stood up, painfully, and steadied himself. The concierge and a receptionist were having an urgent, whispered conversation; then the concierge gestured to a doorman, who was walking purposefully towards Lock. Lock held his hand up, and started walking shakily past the flowers towards the revolving glass door that led into the street, feeling everyone’s eyes on his back. The piano music played on.

  Out on the street the cold hit him again, making his eyes water. This was the bright street that he had seen earlier. He scanned it from left to right. To the right, at the corner of the hotel, stood the tall man, his arms crossed. Just standing, watching Lock. Lock stepped back onto the steps of the hotel and turned to go back in. Through the glass he could see the small man standing by the flowers in the middle of the room. For a moment his mind was blank. No useful thought was there. He had got this far on luck and what remained of his instinct.

  It seemed he had a tiny scrap left. Going back up the steps he walked through a door to the left of the revolving doors, wrong-footing the doorman who was now on the other side. He walked towards the small man, who looked briefly taken aback. But instead of tackling him or challenging him, Lock climbed clumsily onto the table and with the sole of his shoe kicked the vase over, shouting as it fell, in his head or out loud he didn’t know, the words mangled and slow: would you just leave me the fuck alone.

  Guests sitting nearby with their drinks recoiled but the heavy glass vase remained intact, landing on the carpet with a thud and spilling flowers and water onto the floor. Lock looked down at the strange scene he had made. He felt high above it. The small man had stepped well away from him, and was now by the exit. The doorman, joined by a colleague, was at the table, trying to work out how to get Lock down with the minimum of fuss. The only noise was the Chopin still piping from the speakers in the ceiling.

  ‘English,’ said Lock to the doorman. ‘Very drunk.’ He sat down to slide himself off the table. The doorman took Lock firmly by the arm and walked him across the lobby to a door behind reception. His colleague followed.

  Everything Lock looked at slipped away. The more effort he made the more it slipped. He tried to focus on a single point but there were no points. He felt himself being guided to a chair and pushed gently into it. There was a desk, and a computer, and beyond them a man with a moustache like a brush and above it a red, bulbous nose.

  This man introduced himself in broken English as Herr Gerber. He was the head of security at the hotel and he was going to call the police. He said some other things in German, but Lock didn’t understand them. ‘Police’ he understood, though, and ‘Polizei’, and he explained in broken phrases, stumbling through the words, that he was an important English businessman and that someone was trying to kill him. Gerber looked at him for a moment and then reached for his phone. Lock, holding up an unsteady hand, told him to wait and reached into his back pocket, expecting his wallet to be gone. To his surprise it was still there, and still full of money. He took two notes out, looked at them carefully as if making sure they were real, and put them deliberately on Gerber’s desk side by side.

  ‘I need to call. One call.’

  Gerber left the notes where they were and angled the phone towards Lock.

  ‘Ikertu,’ said Lock. ‘I don’t have the number. London.’

  Gerber looked at him, shook his head and sighed. He tore a piece of paper from a pad in front of him and passed it across to Lock with a pen. Lock wrote on it feebly and passed it back. Gerber turned to his computer and after a minute took the phone and dialled a number. He passed the receiver to Lock.

  The person who answered the phone refused to put him through to Webster, and Lock didn’t have the energy to argue. He left a number that Gerber gave him, and for two minutes the three men just sat in the office, not talking. Gerber busied himself at his desk; the doorman manned the door. Lock felt like his head was full of metal, and his gut ached. He could feel the nausea steadily returning and hoped it would wait until he was clear of the hotel. He wasn’t sure his money would stretch that far.

  The phone rang. Gerber answered and passed the phone to Lock. Lock talked laboriously and then passed the phone back to Gerber who, after a minute or two and a few grunted words of German, put the receiver down and said to Lock, ‘Give me another five hundred.’

  Lock frowned. ‘Why?’

  ‘I’m going to drive you.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Out of town. To meet your friend.’

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  When the call came through Webster was asleep on Lock’s bed, his head uncomfortably against the headboard, his chin pressing down onto his collarbone. As the phone rang, a loud old-fashioned ring, he opened his eyes and felt familiar pain along the side of his head. Lock and Inessa had been in his dreams. How could he have slept?

  He had expected Hammer, and at first didn’t recognize the slow, stretched voice on the other end of the line. Then, with beautiful clarity, it made sense. It was Lock. He was alive. Hammer had got through to Malin. The deal was starting.

  Lock sounded ill. Webster couldn’t make out what he was saying. When Lock passed the phone to Gerber, Webster had assumed that this was part of the ploy: he would now negotiate Lock’s release and the handover of the dossier. As he listened though, confused, it slowly became clear that something else was happening. Gerber was German, without any doubt, and incensed, in a rather bureaucratic way. He didn’t sound tense. He didn’t sound like he wanted anything. All he wanted was for Webster to come to the hotel now to pick up his friend. Only at that point did he realize that Lock was free. He looked up and said a silent thank you to the heavens.

  Webster told Gerber that Lock was in danger and would pay to be taken from the hotel safely. Gerber grunted and said he would drive him to the north side of Gartenplatz; his car was in the car park under the hotel and Lock could lie down on the back seat. They would be there in fifteen minutes and would not be seen.

  Instantly awake, relief and excitement coursing through him, his head forgotten, Webster washed his glass in the bathroom sink, put the books back on the bedside table, plumped up the pillows, smoothed out the covers on the bed and pulled the curtains open.

  He looked at the note: what an innocent-looking document. He took two sheets of paper from the rack and three pens from his pocket. One was a blue biro. He clicked the point into place and began to write on one of the sheets of paper, carefully copying Lock’s hand from the note. Since my friend. Since my friend. It needed to be rounder, steadier. He began to find some rhythm. Since my friend Dmitry Gerstman died I have been unhappy. The tails weren’t quite right but that didn’t matter. Taking the clean sheet he worked quickly through a fair copy. He sat back and looked at it. Not bad. It wouldn’t persuade a specialist for a moment but it might fool a glance, which was all he wanted. He folded it as the note had been folded, put it in an envelope and left it on the desk where the note had been. The original he put carefully back into its envelope and into the pocket of his coat. He tidied up, putting the scraps of paper in his pocket as well.

  Checking that the room looked exactly as it had done he turned out the light and left. He picked up his bag and went out, telling Frau Werfel that he had found Mr Green and would be bringing him back shortly.

  He needed a payphone and a taxi. More snow was falling, gently now. The hotel steps were newly icy and he came down them carefully, holding on to the railing. At the bottom he looked up and saw a car approaching from the west, going faster than was sensible on these roads: a grey Mercedes saloon, only the driver inside. It stopped across the entr
ance to a garage ten yards short of the Daniel and a small man wearing an overcoat and cap got out. He walked quickly towards Webster, half sliding on the ice, twisting in mid-stride to lock his car. As he turned back the two men came face to face and in that moment knew each other. Webster could see Lock’s torment in his unsurprised, colourless eyes.

  Neither man wanted to be detained. Each had his own purpose: to clean up Lock’s room; to rescue Lock. For a second they stood, a yard apart, in an unlikely impasse. The man shifted to the side to let him by. As Webster moved past him, their eyes still locked, the man tripped him, sweeping his foot across and catching him on the ankle.

  Webster lost his balance on the ice and fell heavily on his side with a leaden thud, the compacted snow hitting him like iron, his cheek pressing against the frozen sludge on the pavement. By instinct, like a boy, he reached out an arm, caught the bottom of the man’s trousers and pulled hard towards him. The man’s feet went from under him and as he fell on the small of his back Webster scrambled with skating feet to get up. But he was barged from the side and the man was on top of him, hands grasping for his throat, Webster’s reach just long enough to keep him off. For a second they were joined in each other’s grip, raging eyes staring. Webster took a hand from the man’s shoulder and as he fell, off balance, jabbed him with two fingers in the eye; trying to get to his feet, his leather soles slipped hopelessly and he found himself on his knees, like a choirboy, reaching towards the car’s door to pull himself up. The man pulled at Webster’s coat, using it to get upright, until he too was on his knees, up close, searching for grip with his feet, reaching inside his coat pocket. His eyes were bright with fury. Webster grabbed the man’s lapels, arched backwards, and snapped his head down with all its weight on his brow. He felt bone crack. The man’s body slumped in its clothes and Webster let it fall.