Defend or Die

by Tom Marcus

  I was too tired to play games. ‘Beats me.’

  She turned to Ryan. ‘Could you take a look at the list of students at the Sorbonne for me?’

  He nodded, a knowing smile on his face. Had everybody figured it out except me? We waited while he tapped his way into the database.

  ‘Bingo.’ He turned his laptop round and we all looked into the face of a young man, late teens, early twenties, with dark hair to his shoulders and a wide smile. He was slightly pudgy, like there was a bit of puppy fat still to burn off, but he was a handsome kid, no doubt about it. And that smile said he knew it.

  At last the penny dropped. ‘Melnyk junior,’ I said.

  ‘Krystiyan, to be precise,’ Ryan said. ‘Studying engineering.’

  ‘I wonder if Anastasia has a Facebook page?’ Mrs Allenby said.

  Ryan grinned. ‘Just give me a second.’ He turned his laptop round again and his fingers danced over the keys for a couple of minutes. ‘Here we are. And look who we have.’

  Yep, there they were: the happy couple. Krystiyan looking like the cat that got the cream in a velvet tux, his arm round the shoulders of a dazzling blonde in a strapless cocktail dress. You didn’t need a DNA test to see she was Ekaterina Shlovsky’s daughter.

  ‘Another word that came up a few times was pomolvlen,’ Alex said. ‘Engaged.’

  I nodded. ‘And I’ll bet Daddy’s thrilled about that. His little princess marrying the son of a Ukrainian drug dealer. No wonder he’s pissed off.’

  Mrs Allenby sat down and tapped her lips with the end of a gold pencil. ‘So we’ve managed to solve one mystery. We know what Shlovsky and Melnyk were arguing about. But unfortunately that takes us back to square one as far as the terror attack is concerned. Which means we have even less time to stop it. Quite possibly not enough time. Does anybody have any ideas?’

  I had one idea: that we were being played for suckers by somebody. I tried to think through the sequence of events: first Six picks up chatter about the Kremlin using Russians living in the UK to instigate terror attacks. Then Shlovsky looks like he’s having his arm twisted back home. SIS wants to put him under surveillance but the PM won’t have it. The DG decides to do it anyway, and Blindeye is tasked with the job, directed by his old PA, Mrs Allenby. We put him under the microscope and come up with fuck all. Meanwhile two members of the Blindeye team are dead, a third has a near miss and a fourth thinks he might have had one, too.

  Put that all together and what did you get? Which one of those pieces didn’t fit? I was too tired to bloody think.

  ‘I think perhaps we should call it a night,’ Mrs Allenby said. ‘Let’s resume in the morning when our minds are fresh, review what we have and look at our options. As I’ve said, the meter is running. I have a meeting with the Director General tomorrow afternoon and I would like to have something to report.’

  Ryan closed his laptop and reached for his jacket. Alex got up, yawning. Mrs Allenby started putting her things in her bag.

  I stood frozen in the middle of the room, not wanting to quit but not knowing what the hell to do next.

  I looked over at Alan. He was licking his lips and fiddling with his glasses. I’d known him long enough to recognize the signs. He had something on his mind but wasn’t sure if he should speak out.

  ‘Alan, mate, what’s up?’

  The others stopped what they were doing. Alan smiled nervously. ‘Er, probably nothing. Don’t worry about it.’

  Mrs Allenby put her bag down on the table. ‘If you have something to share with the team, Mr Woodburn, even if you think it’s of no consequence, I’d like to hear it.’

  ‘Well . . . I was looking at the footage from the club. The first thing we see is Shlovsky and Melnyk in the booth – well, we assume it’s them, we can’t really see – and sitting at a table is Titov and his number two – we think it’s his number two, anyway, the Brit. Now, when Shlovsky loses his rag and comes out of the booth with Melnyk, Melnyk’s minder jumps up and tries to get in between them, but Titov’s too quick for him and gets him in a bear hug. Then Riccardi tries to calm things down and we don’t really know what happened after that. Does that seem like a fair summary of events?’

  ‘Pretty much,’ I said.

  ‘Sure.’ Alex nodded.

  Alan hesitated, licking his lips again. He looked over at me. ‘So where was the British guy?’

  Fuck. Where was he? You don’t go for a piss or a fag while your boss is out in the open, I knew that much about being a bodyguard. But one minute he was there and the next he’d vanished. And he didn’t come back, even when things kicked off, leaving it to Titov to run interference for Shlovsky all on his own.

  Alan looked up sheepishly. ‘It might be nothing, I mean there’s all sorts of . . . I don’t want to be . . .’

  ‘No, Mr Woodburn,’ Mrs Allenby said firmly. ‘It’s a loose end. And I don’t like loose ends. I think we should take a closer look at our ex-Army friend and see where it leads.’ She turned to me. ‘Go home, Mr Logan, and get some rest. Tomorrow you have work to do.’

  20

  Alex started on me the moment Mrs Allenby closed the door behind her.

  ‘So what really happened? And don’t give me any more of that “walking into a lamp post” shit.’

  I was so fucking knackered, and there were so many strange thoughts churning around in my mind, I felt like just telling her to fuck off and mind her own business. But I just about had enough sense left to know that she was only badgering me because she cared. And come to think of it, she was the only person I had in my life who did. The only one living, anyway. It might be annoying, but her heart was in the right place.

  I gave her a sheepish grin. ‘Yeah, sorry, I was crossing Battersea Bridge and these arseholes were hassling this couple who were, you know, trying to have a romantic moment. I told them to clear off and, well, they needed a bit of persuading. Sorry, I’ve messed up the suit.’

  Alex shook her head. ‘Fuck the suit. It’s you I’m worried about. Anything could have happened. You could have ended up at the nick, trying to explain who you are.’

  I shrugged. ‘It was only kids.’

  I didn’t even know why I was lying. But there was something about the whole thing with Lucy I just wanted to keep to myself for the moment. Until I’d – I don’t know, sorted it out in my mind. I decided to change the subject.

  ‘Ryan, how’s the homework going?’

  Ryan had his head buried in his laptop, as usual. Was he planning on being here all night?

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Claire and Craig. Connections.’

  He frowned. ‘I’m not really getting anywhere, to be honest. Apart from the obvious link, that they were both part of Blindeye, I just don’t have enough to go on. There aren’t enough data points to do a proper analysis. It’s just guesswork.’

  ‘What if you add us both to the mix?’

  ‘That doesn’t actually help. Again, apart from the one thing, there are even fewer commonalities. There’s nothing else that links all four of us – at least nothing I can see.’

  ‘Maybe there’s nothing to see, then,’ I said.

  Ryan sighed. ‘That’s the point. Because they worked for Five, their personnel files are classified. Whatever’s there, I can’t see it. I can’t even get access to mine.’

  Alex brought a mug of coffee over and sat down. ‘We need those files, then. Anyone fancy trying to break into Thames House?’

  ‘There is another way,’ Ryan said. ‘We could ask Mrs Allenby. She’s about the only person I can think of who could get them.’

  I folded my arms. ‘I don’t know. What if that just tips our hand?’

  ‘You still don’t trust her?’ Alex asked.

  I shrugged. I wasn’t sure what I thought any more.

  Alex and Ryan exchanged glances. ‘Do we have any choice?’ she asked.

  I looked at them both. At least it would end things one way or another.

  ‘I guess not.’

/>   I turned to Alan, who’d gone back to his work station where he was fiddling with some wires. I couldn’t work out whether he was trying to set up some equipment or it was just therapy, his way of dealing with all the stress. Not for the first time, I wondered if he had the right stuff for Blindeye. I mean, tech-wise he was a wizard. I used to take the piss by calling him Q, but he’d saved my bacon on more than one occasion when I’d been on a covert surveillance operation and the comms had failed. He always seemed to have a backup plan, could always cobble together something that worked when some fancy new piece of equipment didn’t do what it said it would on the box.

  But he was a backroom guy to his fingertips. Being in the field was never part of the plan, and although he hadn’t said anything, I think the idea that someone might be targeting the lot of us was scaring him shitless.

  ‘Alan, mate, are you listening?’

  He put down what he was working on. ‘Uh, yeah, sure.’

  ‘It needs all of us on board if we’re going to do this. Are you OK with it?’

  He blinked a couple of times behind his thick glasses and licked his lips. ‘If it’s the only way, yeah. I mean, we need to know, don’t we?’

  ‘OK, agreed. We’ll talk to her tomorrow.’

  As soon as I said it, I felt a little shiver, as if we’d just signed our death warrants. But Alex was right: what choice did we have?

  ‘In the meantime, we don’t take any chances. Before anyone leaves here, we do a sweep of the area, then go in pairs, one on follow to pick up any surveillance. Make sense?’

  They all nodded.

  ‘OK, then tomorrow we reassess our options. I’m pretty sure no one’s tailed me home, but we may need to look at moving to different locations. In the meantime, this is the nearest thing we have to a safe house. If things get really hairy, we may need to hole up here for a bit. At least until we can get hold of those files and find out what the fuck is going on.’

  I looked at Alan. ‘Right, get your coat on, mate. We’re out of here.’

  It was 4 a.m. before I got back to the flat, with Alan safely installed in the ground-floor flat in a Peabody building in Victoria he shared with his elderly mum. I did one more circuit to make sure I was clean and let myself in. I stood in the hallway with the lights off, just listening and breathing in the air, trying to pick up any telltale traces of aftershave or body odour. Even cigarette smoke, although something told me the people we were dealing with weren’t stupid enough for that. But there was nothing except the faint aroma of incense.

  I turned on the light in the hall and went into the kitchen. It felt like a week since I’d eaten anything but I was too tired to do anything about it. I could maybe manage a cup of tea, but then all I wanted to do was sleep. I threw a teabag into a mug and filled the kettle, then took my shoes off and padded quietly upstairs, checking each room, then all the doors and windows, to make sure everything was the way I’d left it. I came back downstairs, put my shoes back on, took off my jacket to use as a pillow and lay down on the floor. I was asleep as soon as I closed my eyes.

  The church was packed. I was sitting with Joseph and Sarah, feeling self-conscious in my new suit. As long as I was sitting down, no one could see the ragged holes at the knees or the tear in my sleeve, but I knew Sarah was going to give me hell when we got home. There was blood on my shirt, too, a bright splatter all down the front. It looked fresh; in fact, new spots were seeping through the crisp white cotton as I looked, which meant it must be mine. Which was odd, because I couldn’t feel any pain.

  I looked at Joseph. He was fidgeting in his seat, looking round at all the strange people, the men in morning suits and top hats and the women in bright dresses and big, flowery hats. I tousled his hair and he stuck his tongue out. Now that I looked, there were flowers everywhere, huge sprays of yellow in niches along the walls and two big urns by the font.

  I caught sight of Mrs Allenby in the front row, wearing a green dress and a little black hat with a veil. She was sitting next to Viktor Shlovsky, whispering something in his ear. She was smiling as she spoke, but his expression was grim. On his other side, Ekaterina, in a black cocktail dress and pearl necklace, had a firm hand on his arm, as if she was afraid he was going to jump up and attack someone.

  His eyes flicked to his left and I followed his gaze. On the other side of the aisle was the bridegroom’s family. Melnyk was dressed in a gaudy sharkskin suit, his arm around Krystiyan’s shoulders. He was wearing dark glasses so I couldn’t see his eyes, but you could tell from his grin he was enjoying the proceedings. Krystiyan was dressed in a white silk suit. Not the best choice, I thought. Attention grabbing, yes, but try getting bloodstains out of it.

  He didn’t seem to be able to sit still, casting nervous glances towards the back of the church. I couldn’t help smiling, remembering how that felt. I turned to Sarah, wanting to share the moment together, but she was busy wiping jam from Joseph’s mouth. I looked towards the font. The priest was standing there, his thin lips pursed, looking at his watch. With his nose like a hawk’s beak and cold grey eyes, I recognized the Director General. Where’s his security? I wondered, a trace of panic growing in my guts. Unless that was me? I patted the inside of my jacket. I didn’t have a weapon. I looked at my hand and it was sticky with blood. Sarah frowned, shaking her head. Sorry, I mouthed. Sorry sorry sorry.

  I looked around for something to wipe the blood on, but then the music started. I noticed Viktor wasn’t in his place any more. Mrs Allenby was now chatting with Ekaterina, who was pointing admiringly at Mrs Allenby’s hat, saying, ‘Beautiful, beautiful.’ Somebody’s missing, I thought. There’s somebody who should be here. But I couldn’t think who. I turned to Sarah to ask her who it was, but she and Joseph had gone. In her place was Lucy, the woman from the bridge. She was wearing the same dark skirt and cardigan as before, but they were soaking wet. I noticed her hair was wet, too. There were puddles forming around her feet on the cold flagstones and I could smell the river. She put a hand to her cheek.

  ‘Weddings,’ she said, sniffing. ‘They always make me cry.’

  There was a rustling as the bride made her way down the aisle. I turned round as she passed. She was arm in arm with Shlovsky, and held a little bunch of yellow flowers in her hands. I caught a whiff of something coppery, then realized it must be me. I looked down at the front of my shirt but I couldn’t see any blood.

  I looked at the bride. She was wearing an ivory silk dress that emphasized her tiny waist before ballooning into a big, puffy skirt. Her long blonde hair was loose, almost covering her face. Her veil was made of cobwebs.

  I tried to catch her eye. ‘You look beautiful, Daisy. Really beautiful.’

  Shlovsky peeled off as she approached the priest, and returned to his seat. The DG took her hand and looked towards the opposite pews. Krystiyan Melnyk got up with a sheepish grin, getting one last pat on the back from his father as he squeezed past. He walked forward and the DG took his hand. The happy couple had their backs to me as the DG spoke the words of the ritual. I strained to hear but he spoke so quietly it was just a mumble, until he looked up and said loudly, ‘Till death do us part.’

  The bride and groom turned towards each other. I could see the sweat dripping off Krystiyan’s face. The music had changed. Deep and moody: not so cheerful any more. I thought I recognized it from that movie about Mozart. Daisy started lifting her veil, the cobwebs sticking to her tiny fingers.

  This isn’t right, I thought. I’d been feeling happy for her, but now a sick feeling was creeping up my spine.

  I heard a ringtone.

  ‘Sorry!’ Lucy whispered, rummaging in her bag for her phone, but the ringing just got louder.

  ‘Can’t you stop that?’ I snapped.

  She made a face. ‘Sorry! Sorry! Sorry!’

  I turned with a frown.

  Krystiyan was looking at his bride with horror as she offered up her bone-white skull to be kissed.

  Jesus.

  I jerked awake
, banging the back of my head against the floorboards. My shirt was soaked, my heart hammering. I felt along the floor until I found my phone.

  ‘Yeah.’

  Silence.

  ‘Hello? Who is this?’

  ‘Is that Logan?’ Her voice was soft, uncertain.

  I took a deep breath, trying to get my mind back into gear. ‘Hold on. Give me a second.’

  ‘I’ve woken you up. I’m sorry. Look, I shouldn’t have called . . .’

  ‘No, it’s fine. It’s fine.’ I looked at my watch. Six o’clock. I took another deep breath. ‘I’m glad you did.’

  ‘Are you OK?’

  ‘Yeah. Yeah. I was just having a funny dream.’

  I could feel her smiling on the other end of the phone. ‘Tell me. I could do with cheering up.’

  ‘Not that kind of funny. Not that kind of funny at all.’ I shivered as the last pieces of it melted away, leaving nothing but a feeling of vague dread. ‘Look, do you want to meet, get a coffee or something? I could do with one right now.’

  ‘Are you sure that’s OK? You don’t mind? I’m sure you were hoping the crazy suicidal lady wasn’t going to take you up on your offer.’

  ‘No, that would be good.’

  ‘All right. It’ll be your own fault if I bore you to death.’

  We let the word sit between us for a moment, neither of us knowing what to do with it. Eventually she said, ‘There’s a place near the bridge, where we . . . met. Patsy’s. Do you know it?’

  ‘Yeah, sure. I can be there in twenty minutes.’

  ‘Thank you. I’ll be waiting for you. Then I can tell you all about my sorry, fucked-up life.’

  21

  I had a shower, brushed my teeth, threw on jeans and trainers and made it in twenty-five. I wasn’t sure she’d still be there. I reckoned she’d bail after twenty, figuring I’d thought better of it.

  ‘Strong and black, is that all right? You sounded like you needed it.’