by Henry Porter
‘Yes, you’re warning me. You’re saying that the proof that Lipnik and Kochalyin are the same person and the evidence that he is alive is a very dangerous possession.’
‘Right, because you don’t know of the alliances this man has made in the West. There are many who want to keep him alive and free to carry out their business for them. And you are about to contact the woman who was his wife. She may still be on friendly terms with him. Her home may be watched. They must know about you.’
‘You’re probably right. But this man tried to have her only child killed so they can’t be on particularly good terms.’
‘You are not listening to me. This is a very risky plan you have and I want you to think about how you are going to contact this woman. Remember, she worked for the StB. She was a spy for the Communists. She may not be reliable.’
Harland said nothing. He opened the window to get some fresh air. A few minutes later Zikmund motioned ahead of them.
‘This place here is where the Warsaw Pact troops gathered before the Soviets ordered them to go into Prague in the summer of ’68.’
Harland looked out at a featureless grey plain.
‘And I want you to notice the road sign along here.’
‘Why?’
‘If I remember this road right, you will see, Mr Harland.’ Harland noticed now that there was always an ironic edge when Zikmund addressed him formally.
A few miles on they passed a sign which directed drivers north, to a town twenty-five kilometres away. Its name was Lipnik.
‘You see, this guy carries things from the past right through his life. He must have been here in August 1968 and he used the name in one of his false identities. Remember that, when you see this woman – he carries things through his life.’
They took another hour to reach the Giant Mountains and begin the climb to Jizerské Hory. Zikmund explained that the area had been cleansed of Germans at the end of the Second World War on the orders of the Allied powers. The property was given to the Czechs or seized by the government.
They pulled up in a village square and Zikmund went off to ask for directions. Harland got out and wandered into a nearby churchyard. Every headstone bore a German name. Along the street behind him the faded paint of German store signs was still visible.
It was odd then that Zikmund managed to find one of the few Germans whose forebears had not been tossed back into Saxony. He was a thin, bearded blond with a weather-beaten face, who had just tramped up the village street, prodding his way with a stave through the rutted snow. Two sheepdogs crouched and trembled in the snow as he stopped and answered Zikmund’s questions. He spoke in broken Czech at first but then fell into German when he realised that Zikmund and Harland could understand him better. Yes, he knew old Mrs Rath. She was a good sort – she spoke German well. He used to deliver wood to her and she in turn allowed him to graze his sheep on her pastures in summer. She’d lived here fifteen years back, and her daughter and grandson had moved in with her for a period. They left about ten years ago. He had an idea that they were in Karlsbad in western Bohemia. He said the postman might be able to supply them with an address.
For the next hour they chased a post van from village to village. Eventually they caught up with him at a bridge and he gave them the address in Karlsbad.
‘So we have learned something about the Rath women,’ said Zikmund as they set off on the long drive. ‘They are not poor. That German fellow said they had come into money. So perhaps Mister K has been generous to his womenfolk.’
An hour passed as they descended from the mountains and headed west across another flat expanse of landscape. They spoke little. At some stage Harland became aware that Zikmund was looking in his wing mirror more than seemed necessary, given that the road was free of traffic. He scrutinised the mirror on his side for a few minutes but saw nothing and sank back in his seat.
‘Who knows you are here? asked Zikmund accusingly.
‘No one but Macy, The Bird and my sister.’
‘Someone else does. They follow, then they don’t follow; then they follow. A car, maybe two. I’m not sure. But they are behind us, Mr Harland. I know it.’
Harland turned in his seat. The road behind them was still empty.
A few miles on, Zikmund pulled the car into a turning, then reversed at great speed on to a piece of ground that was hidden by a disused barn. He climbed out and peered round the barn. Harland did likewise.
‘I was right, we do have a companion,’ he said. ‘This is the car.’
The blue Saab had to slow down before taking the bend in front of them and they were able to see that it contained two men. The car appeared to be in no hurry, but Zikmund was agitated. He took out a mobile phone, speed-dialled a number and began to speak slowly, enunciating the Saab’s registration which he’d scrawled with his finger in the grime on the rear window.
‘I called an old colleague,’ he said, lowering the phone. ‘He will arrange for the police to stop the car in the next town and inspect it for faults. That should delay them. We will take the road south so if there is anyone still following us they will think we are going back to Prague.’
They waited for ten minutes before driving on. The landscape became a smoky blue and then for a brief period the setting sun appeared in the west. Zikmund said that even with the detour they would make Karlsbad by eight that evening.
‘You know something?’ he said, after another period of silence. ‘I’ve been thinking of Ostend.’
‘Ostend? In Belgium? Why?’
‘It’s a very interesting place. There are a lot of planes at Ostend and those planes often leave Ostend with no cargo. They fly to Burgas in Bulgaria where they pick up their cargo. Do you know what that cargo is? Military supplies. And then the planes leave for their destinations in Asia and Africa – sometimes South America. It has been the route for most clandestine arms traffic in the last seven years.’
‘Ostend?’
‘It’s near Nato headquarters. Many of the illegal arms shipments are made with Nato’s blessing because they are destined for the armies and militias that Nato supports. Kochalyin is very big in the arms trade and his contacts in Burgas are excellent. Is it possible that Nato owes him a favour or two?’
‘You’re forgetting something,’ said Harland. ‘During the Bosnian civil war, Nato was trying to stop arms shipments from the East into Yugoslavia. That’s how Kochalyin got his foot in the door with the Serbs, by supplying them with arms and fuel. So he was never Nato’s best friend.’
‘Yes, but things change! Nobody cares about Bosnia anymore! Maybe NATO needed his help in making shipments to other parts of the world – you understand what I am saying? So they arranged to fake his death and then tried to prevent your friend investigating it.’
‘What’s Ostend got to do with this?’
‘One of the enterprises that we know Mister K has an interest in is an air freight business in Ostend. Two modified Boeings and a few smaller cargo planes that will go anywhere if the price is right.’
It was certainly a better theory than Harland had supposed at the beginning of Zikmund’s little speech. He had always known that the phone-tracking operation which led Bézier’s soldiers to the hotel must have involved some cooperation from Nato to pinpoint Lipnik’s location and pass it to the French. The same influence that had staged his death could also be brought to bear on the War Crimes Tribunal, which was wholly reliant on Nato for the enforcement of the indictments. This wouldn’t mean the corruption of the tribunal, merely a firm prod here and there to suggest that Alan Griswald’s evidence didn’t amount to much and that the tribunal could spend its time more profitably.
Harland straightened in his seat and groped for the cigarettes and lighter on the dashboard. Zikmund flashed him a saturnine grin in the glow of the instruments and told him to make sure his belt was fastened. The speedometer rose to 120 kph, then beyond.
‘Is this necessary?’
Zikmund didn’t reply. The
y took a turning on to a smaller road and moved at breakneck speed for about ten miles. Then Zikmund pulled over into a deserted depot, manoeuvred behind a rusting petrol tanker and switched off the engine and headlights. They waited. Three or four minutes later a car passed by travelling fast.
‘Well, it wasn’t the Saab,’ said Harland.
‘No, it wasn’t. We’ll go back to the main route and continue to make periodic diversions.’
Harland’s mind returned to Kochalyin – anything rather than think about Eva and how he’d break the news to her. He thought about the code. Clearly the code’s significance was twofold. In the wider context, it had become a matter of urgency for the intelligence organisations to stifle the random exposé of their operations. This was reason enough for the five or six big agencies to combine in tracing the source of the transmissions, which had been quickly achieved with the discovery of the two computers in London. So, in that respect, Cuth was right: the heat was off.
For Kochalyin, the interest in the code was acute because it revealed that Lipnik, the war criminal, was alive. Harland thought back to his conversation with Sara Hezemanns. She had said that Alan Griswald received the crucial part of his evidence after a visit to the East. That trip must have been to Stockholm. Because the images were hidden in the same code as the transmissions, it was reasonable to assume that they were either being prepared for broadcast or had already been used. Either way, it didn’t much matter. The important point was that whoever killed Mortz must have learned that Griswald was in possession of the pictures. Plans were laid to destroy Griswald and the evidence. That left the only other member of the code-making syndicate to deal with. A week later Tomas was effectively silenced by the sniper’s bullet.
Harland now dwelt on his son’s motives. The more he thought about them, the more heroic they seemed to be. For in using the pictures, Tomas must have understood that he had signed his own death warrant. Kochalyin would know they could only have come from him. But why had Tomas released the video still which showed him with Kochalyin on the mountainside? Was it a kind of admission to the world of his guilt – a shriving of his sin? Or was he sending a discreet signature to Kochalyin? He must have appreciated that he would eventually be found and killed. It was at that point that the astonishing coincidence occurred. Tomas saw his picture in the newspapers and decided to risk going to New York. He knew he had very little time and he wanted to meet his real father.
Harland no longer needed to ask himself about Vigo. From the outset his only purpose had been to find out whether anything had survived the plane crash. All his actions were generated by the belief that Harland had retrieved the information or was somehow in league with Griswald and the code-makers. The cursory search of the files in Prague, the phoney Cre`che and the clumsy deployment of the surveillance teams were eloquent of Vigo’s agenda. Everything was designed to press Harland into giving him the evidence. That could only mean that he was working for Kochalyin.
Zikmund gestured to some lights in the hills above the road. ‘Welcome to Karlsbad’, they said. He pulled out the hip flask and raised it in the direction of the town. ‘Let us drink to Karlovy Vary – as we call this city – and to the success of your meeting.’ He passed the slivovitz to Harland who drank a silent toast. Then he remembered something Tomas had said in their last conversation. A man in Bosnia had been killed because of him. How could he have forgotten that?
The apartment building was not difficult to find. They drove past it quickly, then returned on the other side of the street to make a more leisurely inspection. The corner block had been built at the turn of the last century and was lavishly covered in art nouveau detail. Along the upper storeys ran metalwork balustrades which vaulted outwards in a series of balconies, each of which was supported by a pair of muscular hermaphrodite giants. At the corner of the building was a turret-like structure that rose high above the roof and was capped by a small cupola.
‘Money,’ said Zikmund, glancing upwards at the shuttered windows. ‘These people are rich.’
They checked into a small hotel nearby, having left the car in a public car park some distance away. They asked for a room overlooking the street so that they could see the apartment building. A tree stood in the line of sight, but they could just see the entrance from the corner of the room. Harland suggested that one of them should remain in the room and watch the building, while the other took a closer look.
Zikmund left and did not reappear until the early hours. He came back slightly high and bubbling over with information gleaned from a cleaner, a neighbour and a bartender. The Raths had moved to the building about ten years before, the old lady having been advised by her doctors that the hot springs of Karlsbad would do her arthritis good. The younger woman – who was known as Irina – taught yoga. But this was not because she needed the money: the Raths were well off. As far as Zikmund could tell, the building wasn’t being watched.
‘Did anyone mention Tomas?’
‘No one could remember a kid living there or visiting the Rath women, but this is an apartment building: people come and go without being noticed.’
From a supermarket bag he produced a royal blue jacket bearing a logo on the chest and back.
‘This belongs to the company that services the elevator. The last inspector left this behind. The cleaner kept it in his storeroom and I bought it from him for fifty US. Wear it when you go tomorrow.’
They took turns to watch the building. Harland’s shift ran to dawn. At eight he shook Zikmund awake and told him he was going. He put the jacket under one arm and a dark plastic folder used to hold the hotel stationery under the other. The folder would pass as an inspector’s clipboard, he thought.
Ten minutes later Harland walked past the doorman in the apartment building and motioned to the elevator with a grunt. He got in and pressed the buttons for all five floors, in case the concierge was taking sufficient interest to notice where he got out. Flat seven was on the second floor, opposite the entrance to the lift. He moved to the double-door entrance and listened for any sign of life with his hand hovering by the bell. There was no sound. He rang, and after a short pause a woman’s voice came. She seemed to be asking a question. Harland said hello in English, which struck him as stupid, but it had the desired effect. He heard two bolts being drawn and the turn of a key. Suddenly he was looking at Eva.
She had changed little since the picture was taken for the last identity card. If anything, she had lost some weight. She was slightly flushed and her forehead was beaded with sweat. Her clothes – a black leotard top and baggy red pantaloons – also suggested that she had been exercising.
She was frowning slightly, trying to reconcile the English greeting and the jacket. She said something in Czech.
‘Eva,’ said Harland, looking at her steadily. ‘It’s Bobby Harland. It’s me, Bobby.’
Her hands rose to her cheeks and her mouth opened slightly. But no words came out. Then three distinct emotions passed rapidly through her eyes – doubt, fear and pleasure. She took a step backwards. ‘Bobby? Bobby Harland? My God, it is you.’ She hesitated, then smiled.
The same perfect English, Harland thought, the same lilt in the voice, the same light brown eyes.
‘I’m sorry to come like this,’ he said. ‘I should have phoned, but I felt it was better I came in person.’
‘How did you find us? Why are you here?’ She looked him up and down again. Her eyes came to rest on the logo of the jacket.
‘Is it all right if I come in? I need to speak to you.’
An elderly woman’s voice called out from the corridor to his right. She used the name Irina.
‘I’m sorry, I forgot that you don’t call yourself Eva. I can’t get used to Irina.’ He said it pleasantly but Eva looked at him as if he was accusing her of something. This was not going to be at all easy.
Eva’s mother appeared in the light that was flooding into the apartment. She was the type of small, well-dressed old lady you see in tearoom
s all over Middle Europe. She held a metal walking stick and moved with difficulty. Harland nodded at her and briefly looked past her into the apartment. It was large and comfortably furnished. The dark parquet floors were covered in expensive rugs.
The two women spoke to each other in Czech. Eva’s eyes never left Harland’s face.
‘My mother asks the same question that I did. Why are you here?’
Harland waited for a moment. He had planned what he was to say.
‘It would be better if I came in.’
Eva stepped aside and motioned him through a second pair of double doors to a sitting-room filled with scent from a large bunch of lilies. Eva moved to her mother’s side, arms folded.
‘Does your mother know who I am?’
‘Yes, she knows who you are.’
‘It’s about Tomas,’ he said.
‘You’ve heard from Tomas?’ There was a proprietorial edge in her voice which seemed to say, ‘You have no right to talk about my son.’
‘Yes, he came to see me in New York. He told me I was his father.’
‘Where is he now?’ she demanded.
‘In London.’ The old lady touched her daughter’s arm. Eva’s eyes betrayed relief.
‘But …’ Harland was appalled at what he was about to say, appalled also at the arc of fate that had brought him there to say it. ‘But he is ill. He’s in hospital. That’s why I’m here, to tell you.’
‘Ill?’ she demanded. ‘How? How ill is my son? What do you mean ill?’
‘Please,’ he implored, ‘I think you will need to sit down. Your mother will need to sit down.’
Neither moved.
‘Tell me why he is in hospital,’ she said defiantly, as though he might be making up the story.
