Gerald Seymour

by Traitor's Kiss (b) (epub)

  The chief target of the patrol had been Sean O'Connell, quartermaster. Lofty Flint, who was tall, rangy and strong, lived in the shadow of Billy, his sergeant. He followed Billy where Billy led. Into the water with the target, after Ham had yelped from the kick in the privates and the bite on his hand, and when the Irishman had weakened it had been Lofty who held him down till the bubbles ceased to rise. They had dragged the body to the shore, and then Ham had opened the sack to find not rifles but a confusion of wriggling, writhing crabs. The wallet in the breast pocket of the denim jacket had identified Huey Kelly, sometime inshore fisherman. He would have cracked, when the investigation started; if it had not been for Billy, Wickso and Ham, would have confessed. Tyne Cot was his escape and his penance. He pedalled towards his lodgings. He would tell Marie that he was leaving immediately, and that he did not know when, or if, he would be back. He would pack his bag and cycle in the night to Bruges, would leave his bicycle at the station and take a train to Brussels, then the first Eurostar connection to London. There had been something in the eyes of the young man—doubt or uncertainty—that made Lofty think he would not be back.

  Dim light spilled through the open cell door. The prisoners were bedded down, the addicts moaned, the drunks snored and a woman screamed that her baby needed her.

  Sitting on the bed with its concrete base, his shoes up on the blanket, Hamilton Protheroe surveyed them. In the Marines he had been 'Ham', given the name by a warrant officer; it had stuck. The WO2 had said he was lippy, with an attitude problem, but he'd passed the physical tests for entry to the Squadron with room to spare, and the tests for aptitude. At the door were the arresting constables, the interview detectives, the custody officer, and a young man. He'd been dozing, near to sleep, when he'd heard the brush of feet in the corridor and the jangle of the keys, and the young man had been put in with him. They hadn't locked the door behind him, had left it open, and he'd known then he was going to walk.

  The young man had looked dead tired, out on his feet, and perhaps he'd forgotten whatever grand speech had been written for him. He'd been found via his solicitor. 'Well, it's your lucky day, me pitching up, the young man had said. 'She's retracted her evidence, the woman who's accusing you. I'm taking you out, two weeks abroad, then we cut you loose.'

  There were papers to be signed and evidence statements to be binned. The detectives glanced at him with malevolence, as if they despised him. What was in it for him, he'd asked the young man, and he'd been told, and he'd nodded and said that was acceptable. That day, why he looked beaten in, the young man had met the other three—had actually met up with the rest of the team, Billy, Wickso and Lofty. One run, one good payday, piece of crap. He'd lain on the bed, back cushioned by the pillow, head against the wall. 'Yes, I'll do that. No problem, I'll go to Kaliningrad.'

  Ham Protheroe's Russian had been categorized as first grade. Not something he'd ever lose. He'd grinned, at the confusion caused by his Russian, then negotiated with the little creep. 'Half up-front, and the rest on return. Cash. OK?' It was the money. He felt no guilt about Carlingford Lough. They'd all have been in gaol still, if Ham hadn't thought on his feet. Chucked the body back into the water so's the tide would carry it on. Thanked Christ they hadn't radioed in for a contact signal. All legged it one mile up the coast and away from Duggans Point, beyond Greencastle, on to Cranfield Bay. Ham was the communications man. Had called in. 'Alpha Four Kilo: nothing to report.' Had called in an hour later, near Greencastle. 'Alpha Four Kilo: patrol proceeding.' Had called in a last time, now four miles from where Huey Kelly floated on the tide. 'Alpha Four Kilo: nothing to report. Returning to base.' He'd held the team together when the provost marshal had met them at the gate the next night, and had escorted them to the interview with the Crime Squad detectives. 'They'll position it on the boat. There was no boat when we went by. We saw nothing. We were on Cranfield Bay,' he'd whispered. 'Stick with it.'

  He'd done one assignment for Security Shield Ltd, after the inevitable invitation to resign. Done bodyguard to a singer in London, but the money was shit, and he'd borrowed from her. And hadn't been home in nine years, because he'd taken a loan from his father while the parents were away on holiday and he'd had the run of the Cheshire house. He had nobody. His home was the hotels of the south coast, his family were widows and divorcées, and now the police cell. The custody sergeant gave him a plastic bag with his watch, his wallet, loose coins, belt and tie, and Ham signed for them flamboyantly, then swung his feet off the blanket. There was no mirror in the cell but he tidied his hair as best he could, knotted the tie and hitched the belt round his waist. The crowd stood back, made room for him, and he wished them well. He followed the young man out into the car park. He was told where they'd be staying for the rest of the night, and he said he hoped it was three-star because that was what he was used to. He never thanked the young man for coming with an offer of work…but he'd take it. A beggar could not be a chooser…and he was a beggar, and he reckoned that Billy, Wickso and Lofty were beggars also.

  ... Chapter Six

  Q. What part of Russia is described as the 'corridor of crime'?

  A. Kaliningrad.

  'He is a very senior man,' Bikov murmured, and the squinting of his eyes betrayed surprise at what he was told.

  'Wherever you dig you will find moral decay, probably the degeneracy of alcohol abuse,' the general rapped at him.

  Bikov doubted it, but did not contradict. He guarded himself. 'There are many reasons for a man to turn to treachery.'

  'Vanity and vainglory…'

  'He will have an ego, I agree.' He seldom reacted to what he was told. He preferred to depend on what he found for himself.

  '…malicious and distorted self-pride. Dissatisfaction with his work, the yearning for the material trinkets he will have been given.'

  'Perhaps, though, some reasons will be deep in the psyche of the man.'

  'There is no place on this earth for a soldier who has sold his Motherland. Greed will have led him to the path of the criminal.'

  'It will be far in his past—far, far back in the life of Viktor Archenko,' Bikov mused. 'It might go to childhood. It is a puzzle to be unpicked.'

  'Unpicked with delicacy, with extreme care…' The general leaned forward, dropped his voice.

  'Of course.'

  'Exceptional delicacy and care. Archenko is an officer of seniority and with a distinguished record. He has the patronage of an officer who is listened to, is heard in the highest places. A mistake, and we are fallen men. A mistake, and you—we—have no future, we're on the street.'

  'I understand what you say.' Bikov smiled coolly.

  It was a challenge that Yuri Bikov relished. He cared little for the reputation that had gathered on his back. He was a predator who pitted himself against a prey. He sought challenges that were worthy of him, but the praise that came with success left him indifferent. Other predators relied on teeth or claws, or a rifle, but Bikov's weapon was his mind. He had never hurt, physically harmed, a man he had interrogated. It was simply crude to use the Pentathol truth drugs, cruder to extract fingernails and to rely on the rubber truncheons or the electrodes. He read books on psychology and when he had time, in Moscow, he visited the offices of professors of that discipline, perched on a hard chair and invited them to talk with him. His reputation said that Yuri Bikov had never been bested by a man across a bare table from him. What happened to the prey afterwards…it was outside his responsibility.

  The youngest lieutenant colonel in the FSB's military counterintelligence section had arrived in Moscow in darkness. His shoebox apartment was sub-let and unavailable. Bikov, instead, had gone to the residential complex used by the FSB in the capital and been allocated a tiny, cold room. The file had been delivered to him by messenger and he had read it through the night, going back and forward over the few pages it contained. The file had been divided into two sections. The first section comprised the naval career of Archenko and read as a success story for a man pr
otected by a fleet commander.

  There had been a photograph with that section. He had lifted it out of the file and laid it on the bed where he'd sat, and all the time he'd turned the pages he had kept vigil with the photograph of an open-faced man with the jaw of a decision-taker, a friendly face, and one of calm and authority. Father, now dead, a commended airforce flier, reared in the military community, naval entry and quality marks as a cadet, a hobby listed as 'medieval military archaeology', the staff of Admiral Falkovsky, the four unremarkable years at the Grechko staff officers' academy where there had been no complaints, a transfer back to the Northern Fleet, and the Kaliningrad posting, a regime of personal fitness from beach running. No relationship was listed. There was no woman. He had written a note of that on the outside of the first file, and then he'd looked again at the photograph. A handsome man with prospects, who would be chased, but no woman was listed. In his own life, Yuri Bikov's, there was a wife (divorced) and a child now aged fifteen years (estranged). It was joked of him that he was married to his work. He slept occasionally with other officers' wives who were bored or itchy, but never for more than two or three nights. He had underlined what he had written.

  The second file was thinner. A book of matches was stapled in a plastic sack to the inside of the cover. The matches were from a hotel in the Polish city of Gdansk where a delegation, including Archenko, had visited a new dry dock. But the zampolit at the Baltiysk naval base, Piatkin, had questioned the other men on the delegation and they had sworn that the delegation had not visited that hotel. The most recent pages in the second file dealt with that hotel's residents on the three dates Archenko had visited the dry dock in Gdansk. Various nationalities featured: Swedish, German, American and Norwegian had been resident in the hotel on one of the three dates. A British pair had been in the hotel during each of the three dates that Archenko had gone to the dry dock, and Roderick Walton and Elizabeth Beresford had not been in that hotel on any other date. The information had been gained by FSB officers travelling from Warsaw the previous week—with the aid of a donation to the night porter's retirement fund—but the address boxes in the hotel's registration cards had not been filled in. It was interesting but not conclusive. More conclusive were the two most recent sheets added to the file. They detailed the surveillance, carried out by Piatkin on the order of the general in the Lubyanka. Twice the admiral's chief of staff had had proper authorization to visit the castle at Malbork and the church of the Holy Cross at Braniewo, in pursuit of his listed hobby, and the first time he had possibly identified the tail vehicles and the second time he had probably identified them, and each time the journey over the border had been aborted. The files had given him food to feed off, but he thought them not conclusive evidence of guilt.

  He would die—Archenko would be executed inside or outside the law if he were guilty. When or where was a matter of no importance to Yuri Bikov. The gaining of a confession was a matter of importance, was the challenge confronting him.

  A nervousness shimmered in the general. He stood at the window and his hands fidgeted behind his back. 'We have to walk on eggs, because he is protected. I rely on you. Look, come here, look down there. He is still alive. Incredible. Come…'

  Bikov rose from his chair and went to the window. He was beside the general, and followed the line of the general's jabbing finger. A man shuffled on the far side of the square. He was ancient, bent, wore a heavy greatcoat and a woollen cap from which faint wisps of white hair were visible; a grey, straggling moustache hung round his mouth. His appearance was that of a long-retired schoolmaster. He used a stick to steady himself and carried a small plastic bag weighted with shopping. Carpet slippers were on his feet as he crossed the tarmac, and the stick was raised defiantly to halt the traffic he walked between. Now the general seemed to Bikov to cringe.

  'I thought he was dead. You know him? He must be ninety years old. He worked here…that is Ivan Grigoreyev. They say even the dogs did not dare to go close to him. Stalin's man and Beria's. He was the executioner. He succeeded the executioner Maggo. The forties was his time, this was his place. For ten years he killed, always with a revolver, here, under us. It was said of him: "He has a serious attitude to his work." No firing squads, just him. He was so close that he was spattered. Generals, professors, doctors, intellectuals, officials, they all knelt before him. I was told he stank of blood. He worked with two buckets beside him. One had eau-de-Cologne to hide the smell and the other was filled with vodka. All he stopped for on a busy day was to reload his pistol and to drink the vodka. They say he is deaf in his right ear. He was here, his last year, when I first came to work in the Lubyanka. I thought he was dead.'

  The general shook his head and turned away. His visage had whitened. Somewhere in the bowels of the building, in a room off a side corridor, was the now underemployed successor to Ivan Grigoreyev. There was a yard off the back of the building with a door to the cell block. When he had his confession, Bikov would bring Captain, second rank, Viktor Archenko to this building, to that cell block, and would leave him within a few paces of the yard.

  'There is a plane waiting for me. Please excuse me.'

  'Nail him, just nail the shit.'

  Mowbray and Alice arrived after lunch. He hadn't wanted a pool chauffeur, and she'd driven. They'd stopped for an early sandwich in a pub to break the journey from London.

  'God, they've let the place go.'

  'It'll be the cutbacks,' Alice said. 'The handyman's gone, only Maggie's here now.'

  The large gaunt house of dulled red brick had been built with a brewer's profits a century ago, requisitioned for the military in the Second World War and never returned to after the cessation of hostilities. It had been passed to the Foreign Office for training courses in the fifties and sixties, then given to the Service in the seventies. It was rarely used now. The paint peeled on the window frames and the Virginia creeper was rampant. A pane was broken in an upper window and a gutter above the front-door porch dripped. It was listed as having fifteen bedrooms, of which six were habitable, and twelve acres of grounds. The grass hadn't been cut for a month, and Alice muttered something about Crown maintenance being a bit behind. Wet sycamore leaves coated the drive and clogged the drains. A dog, marking their arrival, barked hoarsely inside.

  'It used to be rather a useful accommodation.'

  'I'm sure it'll be fine,' Alice said briskly.

  She took his bag, and hers, from the back seat and followed him to the door. They were deep in rolling Surrey countryside, near to Chiddingfold. Mowbray yanked down the bell pull. The ring pealed inside and the dog's barking came to a frenzy. He scowled until the door opened, and Maggie—mid-forties, her waist bulging—reached up, took his head, kissed him wetly on each cheek. Then he grinned.

  'So pleased to see you, Mr Mowbray. It'll be just like the old days. You're so welcome.' She arched her eyebrows and said softly, coyly, 'Seems like it's a big one.'

  He winked at her. 'All in place, are they?'

  'In the lounge. I lit the fire. Hasn't been one in there this year, might smoke a bit. Mr Locke is in his room.'

  'Is he?' Mowbray looked up the stairs. The carpet was threadbare and one of the rails on the lower flight had come loose from its fitting. He shouted, 'Mr Locke—Gabriel Locke—your presence is required.'

  Locke appeared on the upper landing, a grim look on his face. He was coming down the stairs and his speech rattled. 'Is that dog shut away? Should be shot, it's savage. It's quite unacceptable having a wild dog.'

  'They have arrived, I understand.'

  'The schedule was ridiculous. I've had no sleep, no chance for a break.'

  'And what are they doing now?'

  'I'm not their bloody keeper. I've no idea.'

  Alice said, 'I'll take the bags into the dining room…oh, and I'll ring Jerry, tell him to expect you.' She'd learned never to push herself forward, and he appreciated that. Later, he thought, she'd help Maggie prepare a meal, and then they'd leave, all of them,
but him first. The house was a transit point, out of sight and out of mind.

  At the end of a darkened corridor was a closed door and behind it a murmur of conversation. Locke pushed forward, then spun and blocked Mowbray. 'Do I have permission to say what I think?'

  'If it's relevant…'

  'Actually, I can't believe this is happening,' Locke hissed.

  '…and time is pushing on.'

  'The whole thing is pathetic and doomed.'

  'It has the sanction of the Director General and ministers.' It was said lightly, intentionally so. He sought to belittle Locke.

  'It'll fail.'

  Mowbray thought this was Locke's big throw. No doubt that it had been rehearsed. His smile was avuncular. 'A faint heart never won a fair lady. I don't fail.'

  'It's a world, yours, with cobwebs on it. You're deluded.'

  'You want to walk away, young man, then walk. See if I miss you.'

  'But I can't—I fucking can't. Those men in there…' Locke's arm was flung back and gestured to the door. '…you should have been with me, to see where I dragged them out from. Weirdos, dropouts, fourth rate…'

  'They'll be adequate. They'll be perfectly adequate. Worried about how it will play on your curriculum vitae?' His voice hardened. 'Walk away and see how that plays, young man. If you've finished…'

  'Adequate? They're deadbeats—one of them's even a goddamn criminal. Is that your idea of adequate?'

  'For what we're asking of them— more than adequate. And now please stop the whine. May I come past?'

  Locke stepped back. For a moment Mowbray paused. He took a comb from an inside pocket and slipped it through his hair. He gave his tie knot a little straightening tug, then flicked a single dandruff speck from his shoulder. He opened the door. First impressions always mattered. He breathed hard. Confidence and authority were demanded from the beginning. He strode into the room. The interior was gloomy, the curtains had not been drawn back, the easy chairs were shielded by dust covers, and he smelt the mustiness that the open fire had not cleared. The four men, sitting round a table playing cards, looked up.