Agent of the State

by Roger Pearce

  Olga told Karl it was all an act, designed to impress Westerners brought up on stainless steel. But whatever the City thought of Goschenko, the guests Karl had chauffeured away earlier that afternoon from his comfortable sofa seemed full of admiration.

  Goschenko had insisted Karl take an armchair. He perched uncomfortably on the edge, knowing Goschenko was deliberately confusing the master-and-servant relationship in order to win the argument. ‘It was escort only,’ Goschenko smiled, slapping Karl’s knee, ‘with a couple of drinks afterwards. And she told you I delivered her safely back to you? Like I say, Karl, this is business, not pleasure.’

  After he had stormed away from Olga’s apartment, Karl had spent two hours wandering by the Thames in Hammersmith before skulking back to her well after three. His late night of drink and high emotion had left him feeling shattered. This was one of the rare occasions when his appearance was actually working against him, and he guessed Goschenko knew it. ‘But she doesn’t want to do this any more, Yuri.’

  ‘Well, I asked her and she said yes straight away,’ laughed Goschenko. ‘Come on, Karl, you know all beautiful girls love being seen. Let’s hear no more about it. You look tired. A lot of things are happening to you all at once. Go and be kind to your family. Have fun, and I will see you tomorrow.’

  ‘Thing is, Yuri, Olga and I, well, I don’t know if she told you yet but we’re kind of an item. She’s going back to college. Ealing, to study psychology. Enrols tonight.’

  ‘Karl, let me come to the point.’ Goschenko was no longer smiling. The new look dispelled any ambiguity about their relationship. He spoke softly, gliding straight to the bottom line: ‘You look like shit, and I cannot employ a man who drinks and drives. You need this job, my friend. Don’t tell me you are going to leave so soon over a hooker?’

  Karl wanted to hit Goschenko but left without another word, his boss’s ultimatum ringing in his ears. He knew the insult was aimed at him as much as Olga: what man could hope to share his life with a woman who used her body in that way? Swamped by his obsession with his beautiful lover, Karl felt his self-respect ebbing away. And Yuri Goschenko, who was supposed to be his saviour, was simply compounding his sense of failure.

  Karl left the office immediately and went to his old home to play Dad to his children, just as he had promised Nancy. They were looking out for him from the living-room window when he drew up outside the house shortly before five-thirty. As soon as they clambered into the car they asked him again why he and Mummy were not friends any more. He drove them to a local burger bar and was halfway through his double cheeseburger and fries before he realised he had left his phone in the office. When he took the children home he asked Nancy if he could come in to talk things over, but she made him stay in the car and slammed the door on him as soon as they were safely inside.

  He found his mobile in the cramped space Goschenko had set aside for him at the far end of the carpeted corridor, with a text message from Olga, in Russian. ‘Hi babe c u around 10 all good for psych course lol xxxxx.’ He smiled to himself and switched off the light.

  As he was leaving, he heard noises coming from Goschenko’s office. The door was ajar, so he crept along the corridor to check it out. As he drew closer, the sound acquired the quickening, instantly recognisable rhythm of wood on wood and flesh on flesh. He peered through the doorway, transfixed by his boss’s thrusting backside and Olga’s half-naked body arched on Goschenko’s desk.

  Karl could have killed them both there and then. After all, he had committed his future to the two players who now grunted and moaned their betrayal at him, and everything about his new life of work and love lay in their hands. He watched with cold intensity as Goschenko ejaculated into her.

  Perhaps he did not have enough love for Olga, or hatred for Goschenko; perhaps his senses had become paralysed, or he feared for his pathetic new part-time job. Maybe it was poetic justice for deserting his wife. The scene was a challenge, a threat to his whole life, yet the fight-or-flight moment sent him slinking back down the corridor the way he had come, isolated, leaving them to their pleasure. By the time he found himself again he was out in the street, searching for his car keys. He would always remember it as the most cowardly act in his entire life.

  Thirty-eight

  Wednesday, 19 September, 20.17, wine bar, Westminster

  As misgivings flooded Karl about his future with Olga, John Kerr was having another of the regular confrontations with his past. The subterranean wine bar just off Trafalgar Square was close to the Amnesty offices in Covent Garden so he usually met Robyn, Gabriella’s mother, there. The place was actually a cellar divided into gloomy, low-ceilinged arches stained with the soot of a million candles and cigarettes, but the wine was excellent. It was as if the owner had locked the doors during the Blitz and reopened without a clean-up. Old photographs clung to the peeling walls, with posters advertising Ovaltine and Woodbines, and Robyn always mocked the portrait of a bullish Winston Churchill hanging near the entrance.

  The bar offered privacy, which they both needed for different reasons. Arriving late was her counter-attack to Kerr’s brush-off, so by the time she turned up he was already sitting at a table in the darkest corner with a bottle of Italian red. She was a couple of years older than Kerr, with brown hair in a bob and clear skin free of makeup and undamaged by the sun. She looked neat in blue jeans, sweatshirt and trainers. ‘Hiya. Sorry.’

  ‘No, you’re not,’ said Kerr, sliding her a glass. She leant forward so he could kiss her on both cheeks.

  ‘Lots to talk about at the office.’ Although Robyn had lived in Rome for nearly two decades, her accent still belonged to Glasgow.

  ‘So much injustice in the world.’

  ‘And how many people have you betrayed today, Signor Kerr?’ she asked, sniffing her wine. ‘Or whoever you are this year.’

  Their encounters always began like this. When they had met in 1990 Kerr was in the second year of his undercover mission, using the name John Corley, with Bill Ritchie as his controller. Robyn Callaghan was on secret record as a Scottish nurse with links to Brigate Rosse, the Red Brigades, in Italy. Their lives had converged at a meeting in Brighton organised by a radical left-wing group called International Prisoners’ Aid. Kerr had studied Robyn’s secret Special Branch file and targeted her from the first day.

  On the final evening they had spent four hours getting drunk and fifteen minutes having sex in the back of his van. By the time Robyn tracked John Corley down she was five months pregnant with Gabi. He had spotted her walking into the yard behind the car-spares shop in Southall, where he’d had his cover employment, and his blood had frozen.

  ‘Congratulations,’ he had said, leaping out of the delivery van and forcing himself to think. ‘Who’s the father?’

  ‘Do fuck off.’

  He had taken her to the pub across the road, draining half his first lager in one swallow. ‘What are you going to do?’ he had asked, brain in overdrive, wondering if she could hear his heart trying to jump out of his chest.

  ‘Obviously we’ll have to get married,’ she had said, drinking her Diet Coke without ice. ‘I thought you ought to know, yeah? And I do want it, in case you’re wondering.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ he had said, trying to figure out what she would expect him to say, ‘but this can’t disrupt our civil-rights work.’

  ‘Don’t you think our baby has rights?’

  ‘How did you find me?’

  ‘Listen, I want you to be involved with this child,’ she had said, as if reading Kerr’s mind, ‘so don’t think you can just bloody disappear.’

  ‘This is really going to fuck me up.’ Another flash of reality.

  Much later, when he had finally revealed his true identity, Robyn never admitted to her comrades she had been duped, and Kerr never told Bill Ritchie or anyone else in the Branch about his indiscretion. Robyn had had their daughter in Italy and named her Gabriella after the mother of a Brigate Rosse activist. She had set up shop with a
couple of radical street lawyers off Via Giuseppe Rosaccio, in the northern industrial suburbs of Rome, and immersed herself in a network of human-rights campaigns across Europe.

  ‘You look utterly shagged,’ she said, but made it sound an accusation. ‘Still fucking for Queen and country?’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Kerr, clinking glasses, ‘nice to see you, too.’

  ‘Anyway, I enjoyed Gabi staying over,’ said Robyn, handing Kerr an Italian supermarket bag, ‘and she left her sweater behind.’

  ‘She did a great concert Sunday night. Brilliant.’

  ‘She told me you missed most of it.’

  ‘I was there. It was only one call. And you know we’re full on with the bombing. Her playing seems great.’

  ‘Well, it’s not. She isn’t practising as much as she needs to. To be successful she needs to be full on, John. You know that. We agreed it when we funded her.’

  ‘We did.’

  ‘She’s getting very active politically. Do you know what she’s been up to in London?’

  ‘I think she’s been on a few demos,’ said Kerr. ‘Labour Party stuff. Student protests, that sort of thing. Who hasn’t?’

  ‘And the pro-Palestinian marches. Did she tell you about that?’

  ‘You should be proud of her.’

  ‘So you didn’t know. She’s active in a couple of splinter groups in Rome, too. Got herself bloody arrested last time she was over for assaulting a copper. Not good. I don’t like it.’

  Kerr laughed. ‘Spoken like a true radical.’

  Robyn was not smiling. ‘Don’t take the piss.’ She stared at him. ‘Doesn’t she tell you anything?’

  ‘She holds out on me.’ Kerr looked away. ‘I’m the last person she’ll take advice from. You know that.’

  ‘So work on your relationship. You can’t turn your back on this, John. Christ, I’m supposed to be the leftie, but you’re the one who politicised her. This is down to you. You killed that boy with your bare hands. You’re not the father she thought you were.’ Robyn gave a short laugh. ‘And I should know exactly how she feels.’

  ‘So she cares about what’s happening in the world. What’s wrong with that? It’s tough for this generation. Don’t be so hard on her.’

  ‘You’re missing the point, John. She’s mixing with some really heavy-duty people here in London. You should see her stuff on Facebook. And some of the tweets.’

  Kerr looked at her in mock surprise. ‘You’re reading her messages?’

  ‘She bloody shows me. She’s proud if it.’

  ‘She’s compassionate, Robyn. She cares about stuff. It’s the way we brought her up.’

  ‘Don’t be naïve. I’m not talking non-violent direct action here, John. She’s putting herself out to some bad people. Some of it’s anti-police. She talks about her dad being a cop.’

  ‘Not my name?’

  ‘No. But it’s unsafe all round, and you should know about it. I want you to talk to her.’

  ‘And I will.’ Kerr sipped some wine. ‘So what were you talking about over the road? Still involved in the campaign against the sex trade?’

  ‘You already asked me that on the phone, so cut the bullshit.’

  Kerr had called Robyn within minutes of Kestrel leaping from the boat, telling her as much as he could without disclosing the scale of the scandal. ‘This is important. Like I said, I’m not talking about your regular sex workers. This is kids taken off the street, with Turkey as the point of origin.’

  ‘Who are the end users?’

  ‘Can’t say.’

  ‘Well, it’s the London end you should be worried about,’ Robyn said, then seemed to check herself. ‘But fuck off trying to change the subject. We’re here to talk about Gabi. Promise me you’ll speak to her.’

  ‘Next time she drops by.’

  ‘No. Call her. Be a father. Take the initiative.’

  ‘I promise. And I mean it, Robyn, it really is good to see you.’

  ‘Is that it?’

  ‘Well, I haven’t come here to shag you, if that’s what you mean.’

  ‘Can we talk sex trafficking again for a minute?’

  ‘Seriously?’ Robyn laughed.

  ‘Everything you’ve got.’

  ‘You don’t stop, do you?’ Then she slid her glass aside and frowned, gently chopping the table top with both hands while collecting her thoughts. ‘For starters, you need to read the report we did for the EU. But there are several routes into the UK, as you probably know.’ She waited for Kerr to reply but he was studying his shoes. ‘A couple of weeks back we had a tip-off from a Dutch drugs trafficker who said a British police officer services one of the London connections, drives the truck himself.’

  Kerr’s head shot up. ‘What sort of police officer?’

  ‘A corrupt one, stupid,’ she said, with a lopsided look. ‘Why is your profession so full of deceit?’

  Flashbacks to the siege in Hackney seared his brain. The rubber-heelers had tasked Melanie against a corrupt undercover officer. The mission to identify and trap this individual could so easily have resulted in her death. Suddenly Kerr was back in the stronghold again, ice cold, wanting to kill Melanie’s captors. He tried to keep the urgency from his voice. ‘I mean, is he in the Met?’

  ‘No, and for once just listen. This particular trade route originates in Turkey, with girls snatched from the street to be sex workers in London. He’s absolutely specific about that. The cop makes the pick-up in Holland, hides them in metal coffins beneath the truck for the ferry trip to England and gets a free pass through Customs. The girls must be half dead by the time they get here.’

  ‘Why would a drugs trafficker tell Amnesty this?’

  ‘Because he deals drugs with the cop on the side but draws the line at this kind of abuse.’

  ‘What kind of drugs?’

  ‘High-quality cocaine, mainly,’ Robyn said.

  ‘What did Amnesty do with this? Who did they tell?’

  ‘Above my pay grade. One of our workers has a friend she calls a rubber-heeler, whatever that is.’

  ‘Anti-corruption Unit. Jesus, this is important, Robyn.’

  ‘Said she was going to call him off the record.’

  ‘Did she? Do you know if she made the call? Can you get me a name?’ pressed Kerr, sitting forward.

  Robyn exhaled. ‘All I know is that the bad guy is unusual because he’s got a licence to drive those massive bloody beasts that shouldn’t be allowed on the roads.’

  ‘So, probably HGV-qualified to drive thirty-two-tonners,’ said Kerr. ‘Which narrows the field. Anything else?’

  ‘She thinks he works in some sort of crime-fighting unit, one of those useless bureaucratic monsters they refer to by its letters.’

  Kerr’s jacket pocket was buzzing.

  Robyn scowled. ‘Don’t you ever turn that bloody thing off?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter. Go on.’

  ‘Cosa something, as in Cosa Nostra.’

  ‘SOCA? Does that sound right?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said softly. ‘Yeah, it does. Whatever it stands for.’

  ‘Serious Organised Crime Agency. It’s the old name for the National Crime Agency. Their boss just offered me a job to investigate this kind of shit. He’s a good man, a friend, and I want to look out for him. Can you get me some more, Robyn? It’s really important.’

  ‘So you keep saying. I’ll see what I can do.’

  ‘You’re a one-off,’ said Kerr, kissing her on the cheek and checking his BlackBerry in a single movement, ‘and I have to make a call.’

  ‘Another woman?’

  ‘It is, actually,’ he chuckled, reading Melanie’s surveillance update, ‘but it’s just work.’

  Robyn laughed, almost choking on her wine. ‘Yeah, just like me.’

  Thirty-nine

  Wednesday, 19 September, 21.53, Kerr’s apartment

  Kerr arrived home to find Justin high up in the hallway on his step-ladder. ‘Help yourself from the fridge,’ he
said, flicking on the kettle.

  ‘Already did.’

  Kerr saw the three miniature microphones as soon as he returned to the living room. ‘Where the hell did these come from?’ They were lying on the sofa, where Justin had lined them up like exhibits.

  ‘Telephone, table lamp and TV. Usual places,’ said Justin, scampering down the ladder. ‘I’m sorry, boss. They got here first, but I’m installing the camera anyway.’

  ‘Jesus. When did you find them?’

  ‘The scanner was beeping like crazy as soon as I walked into the room. They weren’t hard to track.’

  Without touching it, Kerr bent down to examine the nearest device.

  ‘They’re not your bog-standard Met issue,’ said Justin, apparently reading Kerr’s thoughts, ‘but not hard to find.’

  ‘Jack and I searched Marston Street Monday night,’ said Kerr. ‘So let’s assume they’re bugging me because of that. Which means they broke in during the last forty-eight hours. I’ve hardly been home. Made no calls from here. All they’ll have is me snoring.’

  ‘Let’s not assume anything, boss. We had the meeting here Sunday, remember? That was a pretty free and easy discussion, as I recall. No holds barred. Including my ducking and diving inside Jibril’s safe-house and Julia Bakkour’s office.’

  ‘Which gives them what? The fact we know about Omar Taleb calling Julia on the day of the bombings.’

  ‘Plus the code – you know, the ED dash TA stuff – and the fact I found Jibril’s Sim card.’

  ‘Right,’ said Kerr, frowning as he rewound Sunday afternoon’s get-together. ‘And the dodgy history of that safe-house linked to Syrian terrorism in London.’