The Man Between

by Charles Cumming

  ‘What do you mean?’ Carradine was wondering why Somerville had become so agitated. It was as though he had a personal stake in some aspect of Resurrection’s activities.

  ‘I mean how are we, as human beings, supposed to identify such people? “Those who know that they have done wrong.” They can’t even identify themselves. What Simakov and his merry band of followers failed to realise is that most people aren’t particularly interested in playing nice. They want to join the groups that have their hands on the levers of power. They want to gorge themselves at the same troughs that have enriched the so-called “elites”. They don’t want to smash the state; they want to assist it so that they can join in the fun. People are greedy, Kit. Human beings are selfish, competitive. You’re a novelist, for Christ’s sake. Surely you’ve realised that by now?’

  ‘The only thing I’ve realised is that you’ve been working too long for an organisation that sees only the worst in people.’ Carradine was waiting for Hulse to add his two cents, but the American seemed content to listen. ‘I have much greater faith in the essential decency of humankind.’

  Somerville repeated the phrase with scornful condescension – ‘the essential decency of humankind’ – and drained the last of his pint. Hulse looked on with an expression of benign amusement. ‘Isn’t that touching? You should have known, just as Lara and Simakov should have known, that ideological movements of the Resurrection sort, particularly those that take on a paramilitary quality, are always hijacked by thugs and bigots, by the intolerant, holier-than-thou “no platform” crowd, by the self-righteous and the misguided.’

  ‘Maybe so,’ Carradine replied, aware that Somerville had referred to Bartok by her first name twice in the space of five minutes. ‘Maybe so. But there was nobility at the outset. The possibility of real change. There was hope.’

  ‘What a load of cock.’ Somerville stood up and stretched his back. ‘Change? Hope? Save me from the romantic delusions of the artistic classes. Save me from the writers. Same again, gentlemen?’

  ‘Just a minute,’ said Carradine. It was important to respond to Somerville’s accusations. ‘I’ve never been involved in Resurrection actions—’

  Somerville interrupted him.

  ‘That’s not the point,’ he said.

  ‘Of course it’s the point.’ To his consternation, Hulse was checking a message on his mobile phone. ‘I’m here because you wanted to speak to me. I’m here because I’m worried that the people who were hunting Lara in Morocco, the men who killed Ramón and Mantis, may try to do the same to me. I need your help. I want answers. I don’t understand why the fuck I’m listening to you ranting on about Resurrection.’

  ‘Oh, don’t worry about the Moscow Men.’ Somerville placed a hand on Carradine’s back. It was as though he considered the potential threat to his life to be no more serious than the matter of settling the bill in the restaurant. ‘They’ll never touch you. They think you’re one of us.’

  ‘They what?!’

  Carradine was stunned. Hulse looked up from his phone. ‘Think about it,’ he said, taking over the narrative from Somerville. ‘You turn up in Lara’s apartment and beat up on the guy they sent to grab her. You write about espionage with a degree of verisimilitude …’

  ‘Ooh, nice word,’ said Somerville.

  ‘Thanks, man.’ Hulse put his wallet on the table. Carradine could see the outline of a condom pressing out through the leather. ‘Then you vanish from Marrakech without a trace, as far as they’re concerned with the connivance of the British Secret Service …’

  ‘That’s what they think?’ Carradine suddenly understood why he had been left unmolested since he returned to London. ‘How do you know all this?’

  ‘Pay grade, Kit. Pay grade.’ It had become a shorthand for whatever Somerville felt like concealing from him. He ordered more drinks and walked off in the direction of the gents, leaving Carradine alone with Hulse. He had been handed an unexpected opportunity to speak to the American in more detail about what had happened in Morocco.

  ‘What about Oubakir?’ he said. ‘Can you tell me about him, or is he above my pay grade too?’

  ‘Who?’ Hulse was putting the phone back in his pocket. Either he hadn’t heard the name clearly or was pretending not to have recognised it.

  ‘Mohammed Oubakir. How did he know you were Agency? Why did he warn me in Blaine’s to be careful around you?’

  ‘He said that?’ An Ed Sheeran song came on the sound system. Somebody at a table on the far side of the brasserie shouted out: ‘Oh for fuck’s sake, not this shit.’

  ‘He said that,’ Carradine confirmed.

  Hulse took a moment to compose himself.

  ‘Look,’ he said. ‘I work North Africa. I meet a lot of people. Some of them assume I work for the Agency, some of them don’t. Oubakir was on our radar because of his association with Mantis. We knew he was feeding intel back to Moscow thinking it was going to London. We allowed Stephen Graham to continue to operate for precisely this reason. He showed us who the Russians were interested in, where the gaps were in their knowledge, who they were talking to. When I saw you eating dinner with Oubakir, and Ramón told me you were associated with Mantis, I got suspicious. It’s what I’m paid to do.’

  Not for the first time Carradine wished that he could take some time off, write everything down, try to work out exactly who was telling him the truth and who wasn’t. He saw Somerville coming back from the gents.

  ‘So, as I was saying.’ It was as if he had been away for no more than a few seconds. The waiter put Somerville’s pint on the table and returned to the bar to collect the other drinks. ‘Here’s my theory on the pointlessness of Resurrection.’ He sat down, took a draw from the pint and looked as though he expected a rapt audience. ‘Life is cyclical, gentlemen. It goes in phases. Seven years of famine. Seven years of plenty. The issues that are aggravating us today have been aggravating our forefathers for centuries. There is nothing new under the sun. A noble, articulate, mixed-race liberal icon takes over the Presidency of the United States. Does he make the world a better place? No, he does not. A narcissistic sociopath with a thin skin and a bad dye job disgraces the Presidency of the United States. Does he make the world a worse place? No, he does not.’ The waiter put a gin and tonic in front of Hulse, another Diet Coke in front of Carradine. Carradine switched them round. ‘We are a planet of individuals. Our happiness is tied to small things: food, water, sex, friendship. Manchester United.’ A grin from Hulse. ‘The activities of a tin-pot dictator in Washington, Moscow or Istanbul don’t amount to a hill of beans in terms of a man’s contentment.’

  ‘Try telling that to the people they imprison, the people they humiliate, the people they kill,’ said Carradine.

  ‘That’s my point!’ Somerville exclaimed. ‘In any historical cycle there will be people who suffer, people who die, people who are imprisoned because of the actions of their politicians. But to think that you can make those politicians act differently, to think that you can change the outlook or behaviour of a newspaper columnist, a politician, a corrupt banker, a climate change denier – with whoever you happen to have a gripe with that week – is the height of fucking stupidity. Nobody ever changes their mind about anything!’

  Hulse was about to interrupt when Somerville silenced him.

  ‘Furthermore, it is my personal belief that the more rancid, the more corrupt, the more cynical, the more craven the behaviour of our public officials, the more it brings decent people closer and closer together. To condemn them? Yes. But also to remind ourselves that the vast majority of people are well-intentioned, decent citizens and that the targets of Resurrection are therefore a tiny minority of mavericks and outliers who are best ignored, and certainly tolerated.’

  ‘I wish I could agree with you, Julian,’ said Hulse.

  ‘Me too,’ said Carradine, trying to square Somerville’s optimistic remarks with his earlier tirade against greed and self-interest. Somerville’s phone rang. He answe
red it with a brisk ‘Hello’ then listened as whoever was calling delivered what appeared to be astounding news. Even Hulse seemed surprised. Somerville’s facial expression moved from relaxed good humour to profound shock in the space of a few seconds.

  ‘Say that again,’ he said. ‘When? How?’

  There was a lengthy silence. Carradine would have given the world to know what Somerville had been told. Hulse mouthed the words ‘What’s up?’ but Somerville ignored him.

  ‘I see,’ he said. ‘OK, understood. Yes. We’re leaving now. I’ll see you as soon as I see you. Bye.’

  44

  Somerville took £30 out of his wallet, handed the money to Carradine and summoned Hulse to his feet.

  ‘We have to go,’ he said. ‘Kit, here’s a number to reach me at if you’re ever worried or get in any trouble.’

  Scribbling the number on the back of a menu, Somerville apologised for bringing the meeting to such an abrupt conclusion but explained that something urgent had come up at work.

  ‘What kind of thing?’ Carradine asked. He noticed that the first five digits written down were the same as his own and that the number ended with a sequence of twos.

  ‘Pay grade,’ said Hulse, adjusting his jacket.

  ‘That should cover the drinks,’ said Somerville, nodding at the money. Carradine didn’t think that it would.

  ‘So I just go back to my old life?’ he said. ‘Forget about Lara. Forget about Morocco?’

  ‘Forget about all of us.’ Hulse patted him on the back in a way that Carradine found intensely irritating. ‘Just keep writing those books, Kit. That’s what you’re good at.’

  That last, patronising remark, delivered as Hulse and Somerville hurried out of the brasserie looking like ushers running late for a wedding, cemented an idea in Carradine’s mind. In an instant, his natural curiosity and thirst for risk got the better of him. He pinned the money under his half-finished gin and tonic, tore the number off the menu and followed them out onto the street.

  Emerging from the brasserie, he saw Hulse ducking into the back seat of the Jaguar on the opposite side of the road. He assumed that Somerville was already inside. Two black cabs were coming down the one-way street. Carradine raised his hand, missed the first taxi but hailed the second.

  ‘Do you see that Jaguar?’ he said, climbing into the back.

  ‘What’s that, guv?’

  The driver switched on a microphone so that they could hear one another more clearly. He had a central casting Cockney accent, a shaved head and a perfectly horizontal crease of fat at the base of his scalp.

  ‘There’s a green Jaguar up ahead on the left.’

  ‘So there is.’

  ‘How do you feel about following it?’

  ‘How do I feel?’ There was a pause. Carradine remembered tailing Lara to the riad in Marrakech. ‘If you’re paying, mate, I’ll follow whoever you want me to follow. Follow my leader. Follow the money. Follow the yellow brick road. Whatever you want.’

  By force of habit Carradine fastened his seatbelt, a detail he would have excluded had he been writing the scene in a script or novel. He couldn’t imagine Humphrey Bogart or Harrison Ford being concerned about back seat safety.

  ‘Great,’ he said. The Jaguar was about fifty metres ahead and already indicating to the right. Somerville and Hulse could be heading to Service headquarters, to the American Embassy, to a safe house or airport. ‘Do you take credit cards?’ he asked.

  ‘If you’ve got ’em, I take ’em,’ said the driver, making eye contact in the rear-view mirror. ‘So who are we following? Jealous husband? Jealous housewife? David Beckham?’

  ‘I really have no idea,’ Carradine replied, leaning back in his seat. ‘No idea at all.’

  45

  Hulse and Somerville did not go far. Carradine followed the Jaguar from Soho to Hyde Park Corner then south-west into Mayfair. The driver did such a good job of keeping a discreet distance and concealing himself in traffic that Carradine wondered if he had previous experience.

  ‘Ever been asked to follow someone before?’

  ‘Once or twice, guv. Once or twice.’

  The Jaguar pulled up outside a large terraced house on Chapel Street. Carradine recognised the road. He had been to a party in an Italian restaurant on the corner less than a year earlier. The cab loitered about a hundred metres away as Somerville emerged from the Jaguar and looked up at the house.

  ‘Suspect number one,’ said the driver. ‘Someone should have a word with him about that suit.’

  Carradine was trying to work out which address Somerville was heading into. Hulse opened the back door and joined him on the pavement. Somerville tapped on the roof and the Jaguar pulled away.

  ‘Now that geezer’s gotta be a Yank. You can tell ’em a mile off.’

  ‘You’re not wrong,’ Carradine replied, observing the contrast between Hulse’s healthy, athletic demeanour and the slightly stooped, anxious-looking Somerville.

  ‘What now?’ the driver asked.

  ‘I give you money,’ Carradine replied, handing over a twenty-pound note. ‘You’ve been brilliant. Thanks so much.’ The change came back but Carradine waved it away. ‘Do me a favour and forget this ever happened.’

  ‘Sure thing. Say no more.’

  The taxi pulled away leaving Carradine in the middle of the road. He had seen Somerville and Hulse going down a flight of steps towards a basement. They were now out of sight. He jogged towards the house, keeping an eye on a damaged column beyond the gate as a marker for the entrance.

  He walked up to the building, staying on the street side of the pavement so that his feet would not be visible to anyone who happened to look up from the basement. He came to a halt and looked down.

  Sitting at a table with a piece of paper, a pen and what looked like a voice recorder in front of her, was Lara Bartok. She stood up as Somerville came into the room and shook his hand. There was no question in Carradine’s mind that they already knew one another; the body language between them was unmistakable. This was a reunion, not an introduction. As somebody else in the room lowered a set of pale yellow blinds, preventing Carradine from seeing anything else through the window, the beauty and the depth of the operation became clear to him in a moment of overwhelming clarity. He turned away from the house, dumbfounded by what he now understood.

  46

  Lara Bartok was a spy. Carradine could think of no other plausible explanation for everything that had taken place. Recruited by the Service in her early twenties, she had been played against Ivan Simakov when he had been working for Russian intelligence. She had subsequently fallen in love with him and effectively deserted her post. That was why Somerville had been so agitated by any mention of Resurrection and so dismissive of the movement’s ethos. He had recruited Bartok but failed to stop her succumbing to Simakov’s charms. He had lost her to a cause greater than his own.

  The more Carradine thought about it, the more the theory made sense. When Bartok had decided to leave Simakov, she had not been able to seek the Service’s protection. As a common criminal, sought by the American authorities, London had abandoned her to her fate. Carradine thought back to their conversation in the riad. When he had asked her how she knew that Stephen Graham was operating under a false flag, her answer had been vague and evasive. I just knew. She knew because there had never been a ‘Stephen Graham’ on the books at British intelligence.

  Carradine lit a cigarette. He was walking along Chapel Street in a heightened state, close to the exhilaration a writer experiences after a creative breakthrough. Yet he was also disturbed by the idea that Lara was so close and yet so out of reach. He wanted to see her, to hear her side of the story. He fought the urge to go to the basement and to ring the doorbell. Quite apart from the humiliation of being followed to the flat, Somerville and Hulse would be horrified to see him. They were hardly likely to welcome him into the fold and make him privy to what they knew about LASZLO. More likely he would be escorted from the buil
ding and placed on a watchlist. Carradine’s presence might also make things difficult for Bartok. It was better to stay away, to use what he now knew to his own advantage. Whatever Somerville might ask of him in the future, whatever lies Hulse may or may not tell, whatever claims were made, Carradine would know the truth. Information was power.

  He returned to his flat on foot. It was a beautiful summer evening. As he walked through Hyde Park, Carradine began to unravel more of the mysteries of Morocco. He remembered Bartok’s reluctance to go to the British Embassy in Rabat. She had been afraid of arrest, perhaps even of being handed over to the Americans. If that was the case, why was she now in London? Had she been seized in Spain or had she decided to hand herself in?

  It was almost dark by the time he reached his flat. He opened the door and switched on the light in the hall. He usually placed his house keys in a small bowl on a table facing the door. The bowl was not there. The cleaner, Mrs Ritter, had been to the flat while he was away. Perhaps she had moved it.

  Carradine went into the living room. As he put his phone down on a side table, he became aware that the rug in the centre of the room was facing the wrong way. The black horses in the design usually looked out in the direction of Hyde Park, but the rug had been spun through ninety degrees and was now facing towards the kitchen. He wondered if Mrs Ritter had also been that afternoon, though she always texted if she was planning to come on a different day.