The Man Between

by Charles Cumming

  ‘Not necessary,’ he said. ‘Just do what I’ve told you. We park outside the apartment. You get out. You walk down. Lisa and Otis will follow you.’

  ‘Lisa? Otis?’ said Carradine.

  ‘You wanted names.’ Simakov was amused by his own joke. ‘Now you have names.’

  Simakov took out a third balaclava.

  ‘For me?’ Carradine asked.

  ‘Of course not for you. They need to see your face.’

  Carradine looked at the driver. He was huge and muscular, with dead eyes, almost certainly one of the men who had attacked Redmond. The woman’s face was entirely devoid of expression. Carradine cast his mind back to the riad one last time. He could still picture Bartok on the bed, fixing the signals. Three quick knocks followed by three slower knocks to confirm that it was safe to let him in; the rhythm of ‘Rule Britannia’ tapped out if Carradine was compromised. He wondered if she would even remember the code.

  ‘Everybody ready?’ Simakov asked.

  Grunts and nods from the Russians. The driver put the van in gear and pulled up a few feet from the entrance to the basement. As he did so, the woman pulled the balaclava over her head and took two handguns from the glove box. She passed one of the guns to the driver as he switched off the engine. Simakov appeared to be signalling to a vehicle or property on the opposite side of the street. Carradine assumed it was to the same Russian intelligence officer who had tailed Bartok and Somerville around Belgrave Square. Some kind of signal came back – perhaps an all-clear, perhaps a confirmation that Bartok was inside – and Simakov gave the go-ahead.

  ‘Now.’

  He pulled back a side door on the van. Simakov was going to stay behind while the attack took place. If he saw that something was wrong in the basement, he would join the fight. Otherwise he would remain out of sight.

  It was a beautiful summer evening. As Carradine stepped out of the van and heard the door slide shut behind him, he saw a young man making his way towards him carrying a picnic basket and a bunch of flowers. Just a passing pedestrian going about his business, perhaps walking towards Hyde Park to meet his girlfriend or heading to a barbecue somewhere in a garden in Mayfair. Carradine waited for him to pass. The young man did not break his stride, nor look back as Carradine stepped towards the gate and walked down the short flight of steps to the flat. The pale yellow blinds were drawn. There were no CCTV cameras in sight. A smell of stale, mossy damp drifted up from the basement. Carradine felt the temperature drop as he reached the bottom of the steps. He looked up to see the driver and the woman at the gate, both now wearing balaclavas and moving with the silence of cats behind him.

  This was his chance. By staying in the van, Simakov had given Carradine more of a chance. Reaching out towards the window, he knocked on the glass, loudly tapping out the rhythm of ‘Rule Britannia’ before coming to a halt at the door. He was aware of the driver and the woman reaching him and crouching down on either side of the door as he waited. He prayed that Bartok had recognised the signal.

  He knocked again, loudly, confidently.

  Rule Britannia. Britannia Rules the Waves.

  At last the driver spoke. ‘Use the bell,’ he hissed.

  ‘Who is it?’ came a reply from inside.

  Carradine recognised Somerville’s voice. There was a hesitancy in it, but Carradine could not tell if this was the natural caution of a spy or if Bartok was beside him, warning him that Carradine was trying to send them a message.

  ‘It’s Kit,’ Carradine replied.

  ‘Everything OK?’

  ‘Everything’s absolutely great.’ Carradine looked down and saw the eyes of the woman staring up at him, impatient, primed to strike. He wished that he had had the presence of mind, the imagination to reply in such a way that Somerville would know for certain that there was a problem, but he could not think of a better response. Perhaps he did not need to. When Carradine had failed to show up at the pub, Somerville had surely concluded that he had been kidnapped. His sudden appearance at the safe house would therefore have set off alarm bells.

  ‘OK, Kit. Just a second.’

  A chain was pulled back on the door. Carradine heard someone reaching for the lock. Instead of stepping to one side and allowing the attack to go ahead, he now did something that he had not intended to do. As the woman leapt up from the ground, Carradine shouted out a warning – ‘Two guns! Get back!’ – as she burst past him into the narrow hall. A shot went off, the woman firing blindly into the living room. Carradine could not tell who she was shooting at or if the gun had gone off accidentally.

  Somerville and Bartok were nowhere to be seen. The driver pushed Carradine violently against the frame of the living-room door as he surged forward. Carradine was so angered by this that he reached out and grabbed at the neck of his jacket, pulling the driver backwards so that he swung around, the gun in his right hand. The balaclava had twisted on his face so that he was blinded. He fired. The shot narrowly missed Carradine, splintering the front door. Sheer rage made him swing a punch at the Russian’s face which knocked him against the wall. High on violence, Carradine kicked him in the stomach and he slumped to the ground. He continued to kick the driver repeatedly in the chest and face, his head jack-knifing to one side as Carradine’s foot connected with the balaclava. A shot was fired in the sitting room as the gun fell out of the driver’s hand. He was unconscious. As Carradine picked up the weapon, he looked ahead and saw the woman lying motionless on the ground. Somerville was standing over her with a pistol. It looked as though he had shot her in the neck.

  ‘Where’s Lara?’ Carradine shouted.

  ‘Are there others?’ Somerville replied.

  ‘In the van, yes. Outside. Simakov is alive.’

  Somerville looked at him in consternation.

  ‘What?’

  Bartok walked into the room. She was carrying a kitchen knife. She saw the dead body of the woman on the ground and looked at Carradine.

  ‘Kit,’ she said. She seemed calm, but had heard what he had told Somerville. ‘What did you say? Ivan—’

  A shadow fell across the room. Somerville looked up towards the steps and shouted: ‘Get down!’

  Carradine grabbed Lara and pushed her to the floor, covering her body with his own as he turned and looked back towards the door. Simakov came in, his head concealed beneath a balaclava, his right hand clutching the handgun which, only hours earlier, he had pressed into Carradine’s skull.

  Somerville pointed the pistol at his chest and shouted: ‘Put it down! Put the gun down!’

  With his left hand, Simakov pulled off the balaclava and let it drop to the ground. He looked at Bartok. She gasped when she saw his face.

  ‘Jesus,’ said Somerville.

  ‘Hello, Lara.’ Simakov sounded as though he did not have a care in the world. ‘You’re coming with me.’

  ‘She’s not going anywhere,’ Carradine replied.

  Behind Simakov, in the doorway of the flat, the driver groaned.

  ‘How?’ said Bartok, climbing to her feet in a state of bewilderment. ‘How is it possible?’

  ‘Lara, get back,’ Somerville ordered. He was aiming the pistol at Simakov’s chest. Carradine was still holding the weapon he had picked up in the hall. He did not know if he should shoot or if Somerville would want to take Simakov alive. The threat to Lara’s life seemed imminent. He had to try to save her.

  ‘There may be others,’ he told them. ‘Outside. Russian surveillance. They’re watching the flat.’

  ‘Telling tales out of school, Kit,’ said Simakov. ‘I have a van outside.’ He was speaking very calmly. ‘Here’s what’s going to happen. Lara walks out with me, nice and steady, no big tears or drama. We take off and finish what we started.’

  ‘That’s not going to happen,’ Somerville told him.

  Carradine could feel sweat on the palm of his hand as he gripped the gun. He was sure that the safety catch was off, that all he needed to do was fire.

  ‘So you were
British intelligence all along?’ It was as though Simakov was speaking privately to Bartok and believed that they could not be overheard. ‘You were so clever. I had no idea.’

  ‘Just as I had no idea about you,’ she replied.

  ‘I wonder why Stephen never told you the truth about me. Was it loyalty? Sentiment? Perhaps he enjoyed the feeling of deceiving you. We all did.’

  Anger flashed across Bartok’s face. ‘Put the gun down, Ivan,’ she said. ‘It’s over now. For both of us.’

  ‘Not for you,’ he said, indicating Somerville. ‘The British will look after you, no?’

  Carradine knew then that he had to shoot. Simakov was prepared to die and to take Lara with him. There was a tiny movement behind the blinds on the window of the basement. Was it Russian back-up? A faint scuffing noise on the concrete steps outside and an almost imperceptible change in the light. Neither Somerville nor Simakov reacted. Lara was staring at Simakov, as though still trying to come to terms with the fact that he was alive.

  ‘We go now,’ he said, sweeping the gun towards Somerville, who took a half-step forward but did not fire.

  Carradine knew that this was his chance. Shouting ‘Lara, get down!’ he raised the gun, only to see Simakov’s chest explode in front of him in an eruption of blood and tissue. Lara was screaming as Sebastian Hulse came into the room. He had shot Simakov in the back at point-blank range.

  ‘Fucking hell,’ said Somerville.

  The driver moved in the hall, reaching out and grabbing Hulse’s leg. Hulse looked down and shot him in the head.

  ‘Enough!’ Bartok screamed.

  Hulse stepped forward, crouched and pulled back Simakov’s head. His face and beard were clear of blood but Hulse did not recognise the man he had killed.

  ‘Simakov,’ Carradine told him, putting his gun beside the digital recorder on the table. ‘You just shot Ivan Simakov.’

  Hulse let the head fall back. He looked at Somerville for confirmation of what he had been told. Somerville nodded. Carradine was holding Bartok as she stared at the Russian’s motionless body.

  ‘We need to move fast.’ Somerville picked up a phone. ‘All this gets cleared up.’

  SECRET INTELLIGENCE SERVICE

  INTERNAL CIRCULATION ONLY

  Extracts from Part 6 of ‘Report into Origins and Development of Resurrection’

  … It is the view of this officer that any information regarding Ivan Simakov’s true role in the genesis and development of Resurrection worldwide should remain a matter of the utmost secrecy.

  By the same measure, Moscow’s hand in encouraging and financing Resurrection attacks in the West must not and should not be disclosed.

  Thus:

  Ivan Simakov did not survive the bomb attack in Moscow.

  Ivan Simakov was not present at the Chapel Street shooting which claimed the lives of two Resurrection activists intent on kidnapping LASZLO. Anatoly Voltsinger and Elena Federova were Belorussian aliens living illegally in the United Kingdom. They were engaged in a burglary of the property at Chapel Street with the intention of stealing jewels valued at over two million pounds sterling. They were overpowered by police and shot dead.

  … It is also the view of this officer that agent LASZLO, who willingly gave herself up in Spain, should be played back into the field as part of a broader UK-led effort to foment and cultivate opposition to the regime in Moscow under the operational codename ‘RETRIBUTION’. The chaos and uncertainty visited upon the towns and cities of the West by the Kremlin will be visited, with interest, upon the towns and cities of the Russian Federation, as well as on Russian government representatives overseas. The time for putting up with foreign interference in the affairs of Five Eyes and other sovereign nations is over. An eye for an eye.

  … Given the well-established links between the current Administration in Washington DC and Russian organised criminal networks, the Agency should be excluded from knowledge of RETRIBUTION until a changing of the guard takes place at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

  J.W.S.

  51

  Nine days after the shootings at Chapel Street, Carradine was walking through Kensington Gardens smoking a cigarette when he was stopped by a short, jovial woman wearing a bottle-green Barbour and holding an ageing black Labrador on a lead.

  ‘Excuse me?’ she said. ‘Are you C.K. Carradine?’

  Carradine wondered if it was a practical joke. Surely what happened with Mantis wasn’t happening all over again?

  ‘I am,’ he replied.

  ‘Heard a lot about you,’ said the woman. She had rosy cheeks and blonde highlights in her hair. ‘Here, take this.’

  She reached into the pocket of her Barbour and passed Carradine a mobile phone. He recognised it as an old Nokia 3310. He had owned one himself when he had lived in Istanbul more than a decade earlier.

  ‘I’m to keep this?’ he asked.

  Only a few weeks before he would have wondered why a total stranger was passing him a burner phone in the middle of a London park. Nowadays he knew better.

  ‘Someone will call you.’

  The Labrador rushed forward and jumped up on Carradine’s legs. With his free hand he rubbed the dog’s head and stroked his jaw before the woman tugged him away shouting: ‘Down, Gerald! Down!’

  ‘I’ll wait then,’ Carradine replied.

  ‘Shouldn’t be long,’ said the woman with an engaging smile. ‘I’ll let them know you’ve got it.’

  She nodded at the Nokia before turning away and walking in the direction of Marble Arch. Carradine stubbed out the cigarette on the side of a bin. Less than two minutes later, the phone rang. Carradine took it out of his pocket.

  ‘Hello?’

  ‘Kit! Great to hear your voice.’

  Somerville. Despite everything that had happened, Carradine felt that old familiar exhilaration at a renewed connection with the secret world.

  ‘Hello, Julian.’

  ‘How have you been?’

  ‘Well, thanks. Good to be home.’

  Two rollerbladers buzzed past him on opposite sides, sweeping south towards Kensington Palace. In the distance, Carradine could hear a siren.

  ‘How’s your father?’

  His father was safe and well. On the day Ivan Simakov claimed to have kidnapped him, William Carradine had been playing backgammon in his local pub with a friend.

  ‘Took forty quid off me, the bastard,’ he had told Carradine over dinner at their favourite curry house on Hereford Road. ‘Doubling dice. Who ever thought those were a good idea?’

  ‘He’s fine,’ said Carradine.

  ‘Glad to hear it. And you? Life going well?’

  Lara had left the country. They had spent two days together in a hotel in Brighton before she boarded a ferry for France. Carradine did not know when – if ever – he would see her again. She had told him that she wanted to keep working for the Service, that they had plans for her.

  ‘Life’s good,’ he said. ‘Going to the gym. Working on the book. Fifty press-ups and a thousand words a day. You know how it is for us artistic types, Julian. Same old, same old.’

  ‘Lara is well,’ Somerville replied. Carradine felt his heart stretch out. ‘She wanted me to tell you that.’

  ‘I appreciate it.’

  ‘We’ve been getting some interesting results from your famous memory stick.’ It had transpired that Hulse’s team had intercepted the stick in Marrakech, filled it with chicken feed and played it back to Moscow. ‘Our mutual friend, Mr Yassine, is eager to redress the balance. Now that he knows he’s genuinely on the side of the angels. Thought you’d like to know.’

  ‘I appreciate that, too.’

  Carradine wondered why Somerville was disclosing things that he didn’t need to disclose. There was a momentary silence.

  ‘Kit.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘There’s a lot of admiration in these parts for the way you handled yourself.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it.’

  �
�Some of us think you might be a useful asset in the future.’

  There it was. The narcotic lure of secrecy, still as seductive to Carradine as it had been on that first afternoon with Mantis, only a few hundred metres from where he was standing.

  ‘Only some of you?’ he replied.

  ‘All of us.’

  Another pause. Then:

  ‘How are you fixed tomorrow? Anything planned?’

  They wanted him to continue working for the Service. Maugham. Greene. Forsyth. C.K. Carradine was being presented with a choice. To stay in his office and to stick with his books for the next thirty years, or to work for Queen and country and let the Service decide his fate. It felt like no choice at all.

  ‘I’ve got nothing planned,’ he said.

  ‘Good.’ Somerville cleared his throat. ‘Why don’t you put your pen down for the day and come in for a chat? There’s a job we’d like you to think about. Nothing complicated. Nothing dangerous. Right up your street in fact.’

  Carradine looked up at the trees. Beside him, two children were giggling on a park bench.

  ‘Right up my street,’ he said. ‘Sounds intriguing. Then I suppose I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  Acknowledgements:

  My thanks to: Julia Wisdom, Finn Cotton, Jaime Frost, Kate Elton, Roger Cazalet, Liz Dawson, Abbie Salter, Claire Ward, Anna Derkacz, Damon Greeney, Anne O’Brien and the fantastic team at Harper Collins. To Charles Spicer, April Osborn, Sally Richardson, Jennifer Enderlin, Paul Hochman, Martin Quinn, David Rostein and Dori Weintraub at St Martin’s Press. To Kirsty Gordon, Rebecca Carter and Rebecca Folland at Janklow & Nesbit in London and to Claire Dippel, Stefanie Lieberman, Aaron Rich and Dmitri Chitov in New York. To Jeff Silver and Faisal Kanaan at Grandview and to Jon Cassir, Matt Martin, Angela Dallas and Lindsey Bender at CAA.

  I am also indebted to: Perdita Martell, Max, Stephen Garrett, Sarah Gabriel, Dr Harriette Peel, Natasha Fairweather, Chev Wilkinson, Charlotte Asprey, Natascha McElhone, Roddy and Elif Campbell, Amanda Owens, Nick Green, Jessie Grimond, Stephen Lambert and Jenni Russell, Mischa Glenny and Kirsty Lang, Clare Longrigg, Nicholas Shakespeare, Milly Croft-Baker, Roland Philipps, Natalie Cohen, Benedict, Finnian, Barnaby and Molly Macintyre, Charles Elton, Rosie Dalling, Rachel Harley, Owen Matthews, Deirdre Nazareth, Kate Stephenson, Anna Bilton, James Rhodes, Nici and Daphne Dahrendorf, Noel, Esther Watson, Lisa Hilton, Dinesh Brahmbhatt, Charlotte Cassis, James S, Rory Paget, Boris Starling, Chris de Bellaigue, Mark Pilkington, Guy Walters, Sophie Hackford, Caroline Pilkington, Ian Cumming, Melissa Hanbury, Stanley and Iris.