by Henry Porter
He looked down at the message notifications accumulated on his phone. ‘Give me a quarter of an hour, Ivan. Thanks.’
There were two texts from Macy Harp and one from Macy’s assistant, Imogen, all of which told him that Macy’s and his conference call with Denis would now take place at nine that evening, and several texts on an encrypted app from Detective Inspector Hayes, Samson’s friend in the Met and occasional lover. ‘Call me!’ they all instructed.
He dialled Hayes’s number. She was busy and said she would call back, which she did in under a minute.
‘Samson, were you in north London this afternoon?’
‘Why?’
‘I bloody knew it was you.’
‘What’re you saying?’
‘You wrestling with a lunatic in a skirt and with a bloody great knife.’ She paused to wait for a response, which wasn’t forthcoming. ‘Look at your email – there’s one from my private address.’
He opened his laptop, found the email and clicked on the attachment, film taken with a phone camera. Someone outside the café had caught part of the fight and had evidently moved to get a better shot of the incident, although it was jerky footage and Samson was unrecognisable. There was much more screaming than he remembered and his assailant looked bigger. The man’s escape was filmed, too. And the number of the Suzuki was clearly visible.
‘You watching it?’
‘Yes.’
‘I knew it was you because of that jacket I gave you.’
‘Ah.’
‘Well, at least you’re wearing it. I thought you didn’t like it.’ He didn’t, but had worn it to GreenState because it was so unlike anything he would choose for himself. ‘You’re the anonymous hero of social media – the man who saved lunchtime crowds from a knife-wielding crazy. The Met wants to interview you – this is a serious incident, Samson.’
‘Have you said it was me?’
‘No, because I know you are up to no fucking good. What were you doing?’
‘Waiting for someone.’
‘Right!’
‘Why do they need me? They’ve got the bike’s registration.’
‘And they know who he is.’
‘Who is he?’
‘You’re not getting that information so easily, Samson. I want to know what you were doing at the Junction before I tell you any more. There’s a lot of interest in that particular location and I guess that’s actually why they want to interview you. I’ll see you at your place later.’
‘I’ve got something on . . .’
‘I mean, later. I’ll stay the night so you have time to tell me what the hell you’re up to. That okay with you?’
‘Yes – I guess.’ This was characteristic of their relationship. It wasn’t love, by any means, but a friendly arrangement that suited them both and was the best distraction he had from his perpetual yet now diminished ache for Anastasia Christakos, who had returned to America and her marriage to Denis Hisami after the ordeal of her kidnap and violent release. On the bridge at Narva they had been injured by the same bullet and after that they spent two agonised, blissful weeks of recuperation together. Jo Hayes was smart and uncomplicated company. He admired and liked her a lot, but there was no question of love. There never could be with anyone else.
‘And Samson,’ she said with a note of admonishment.
‘Yes?’
‘This man isn’t your ordinary crazy. He’s a really bad’un. Not good. Look after yourself. I’ll see you about eleven thirty.’
He buzzed down and told Ivan to send Peter Nyman up.
Nyman had been to his office twice before and each time his appearance augured disruption in Samson’s life. It was Nyman who hired him to find a young Syrian refugee named Naji Touma on the migrant trail through the Balkans, and then, three years later, he blundered into Anastasia’s kidnap by Russian hoods. There was one thing you could say about Peter Nyman; whatever his failure to understand the thing that was staring him in the face, he never lost an unreal self-belief.
Samson didn’t get up when he entered but gestured to the chair Nyman used before, where he let himself down with his customary disregard, causing the whole thing to groan and the cushion to wheeze.
‘New suit?’
‘As a matter of fact, yes,’ Nyman replied. ‘I got it in the sales and have only just come to like it.’
‘I can well understand it took time,’ said Samson with a straight face.
‘Well, I think it works quite well,’ said Nyman. His eyes went to the floor. ‘I don’t suppose you have a drink available? I believe we are both going to need it.’
‘What do you want?’ Samson swung round in his chair and went to a small inlaid drinks cabinet that his father had bought in Istanbul twenty years before. ‘Scotch? Gin? Cognac? We can get the mixers sent up from downstairs.’
‘Brandy – I’ll have it on its own.’
Samson handed him the drink.
‘You will need one, too, Samson.’
‘Too early for me.’
Nyman filled his mouth and held it there with his cheeks slightly inflated before swallowing. ‘Robert Harland was killed this morning, shot dead by an assassin in Estonia. He was alone with his wife at some sort of country retreat, a cabin apparently, and the gunman killed him when he was outside, painting.’ He stopped and took another mouthful. ‘Good painter, Bobby.’
Samson took a moment to respond. He was genuinely shocked. ‘Any idea why he was killed?’
‘There are theories.’
‘Does Macy Harp know? They were friends for over forty years.’
‘Yes, he must do. As you say, they were in our service together for many years. In some ways, they were a vintage generation – end of the Cold War, beginning of the modern era of espionage. Everyone is very upset . . . very troubled. Bobby was a hero to us all, as you know. As intelligence officers go, Bobby was the gold standard. The best.’
‘Gold standard? I don’t remember you being very flattering about him in Tallinn,’ said Samson.
‘Operational tensions – all part of the life we chose.’
‘What are the theories?’
Nyman put his glass down and pulled out a handkerchief to dab his nose then clean his glasses vigorously. ‘The theory is that this is just one of the hits planned against all the survivors of the bridge.’
‘By which you mean?’
‘The people who had anything to do with freeing your friend Anastasia and the death of Adam Crane – their top man, Aleksis Chumak, so, that would be Harland, yourself, Denis Hisami, and your young Syrian friend Touma; in fact, anyone who was on or near the bridge at Narva. That may include your friend Anastasia Hisami, I’m afraid.’
Estonia had been a disaster for Nyman – he had been wrong at every turn and paid for it with his position in SIS, though, somehow, he had managed to hang on to an unspecified but reduced role. Against Harland, Nyman was unimaginative and mediocre, which contributed to Samson’s suspicion that Nyman felt some kind of perverted vindication in reporting Harland’s death. ‘What’s your evidence, Peter?’
‘Chatter. We knew they were mightily put out by what had happened, especially about the money and the release of all the names of far-right activists.’
‘They weren’t activists – they were white supremacists and anti-Semites and all were potential terrorists, Peter. Let’s not sanitise what they stood for. They were genocidal killers in the making.’
‘That’s as maybe, but it doesn’t stop them being extremely annoyed and, well, they want to teach us a lesson and the first part of that lesson was killing one of the most talented spies of the last half-century. They are sending a message. Robert Harland’s death is proof that they can do these things with impunity.’ He took up his glass and studied Samson. ‘You haven’t had any trouble of that sort, have you, Samson?’
He shook his head. ‘Running a restaurant doesn’t expose you to a lot of risk.’
‘But you’re someone who likes risk. It’s no secret that you’ve had a bad run at the tables and are, in consequence, forced to take on menial work to pay off your debts. You know how people will gossip about these things.’
Samson smiled. There had been an episode and he had lost big time – exactly £74,500. But that was a year back, when the ache for Anastasia was much stronger and the pain of losing – the counterintuitive thrill of it – made him forget. He couldn’t say whether he had lost intentionally, whether his subconscious had pushed him to defeat in the high-rolling backgammon games that had been a disaster for his father, too, but he understood that the prospect of selling the restaurant and losing much else besides had made him snap out of this funk. ‘You don’t need to worry about me, Peter, although I know you’ve always had my best interests at heart. Now, if you don’t mind, I’m going to call Macy. It will be very hard for him.’
Nyman showed no sign of taking the hint, so Samson rose. ‘Oh, I’m forgetting, how rude of me.’ He sat down again and leaned forward. ‘You never come up here without wanting something. What is it?’
‘Harland knew he was in danger and was, in effect, hiding out on that lonely stretch of land where they hunted him down and ended his life. We want to know why. Was he threatened? Did he have intelligence? There is evidence that he was working on something. You were close to him, Samson – in many ways, you were very alike – and it has occurred to our people that you were aware of the danger he faced, and perhaps had some intimation of a threat to yourself, as well as the other survivors of the bridge. We would like to catch these people. We can’t let them think that Britain is so weak that they can continue to murder our citizens at will. We have to put them on trial.’
‘You don’t seem to have had much success with that so far and, anyway, Harland was an Estonian national. He renounced British citizenship. He didn’t like this country; thought it was ludicrous and posturing.’
Nyman looked around and sipped his brandy. His eyes came to rest on the photographs of Samson’s father and mother as newly-weds and the gap where he’d removed the little framed picture of himself and Anastasia in Venice, the one he had forwarded from the phone he found near a deserted track in Italy where she had been abducted. ‘I get it,’ said Samson, heading off Nyman’s question about the gap or his usual observations about his parents’ life in Beirut half a century before. ‘You want to use me as bait.’
‘I wouldn’t go that far, but you’re the one they’re likely to come after next, and we’d like to monitor you and prevent that attack.’
Samson got up and walked to the door. ‘Peter, you can tell your people to stay away from me. I’m not bloody playing. Now please leave.’
Nyman got up regretfully, knocked back the brandy and came towards him. ‘Nevertheless, we’ll keep an eye out for you.’ He searched for Samson’s hand, but, not finding it, tapped him lightly on the chest. ‘No harm in that, is there? I’ll be downstairs in the restaurant, should you want to talk further.’
Now that Nyman had gone, he’d have that Scotch. He poured the drink and tipped his chair back. Robert Harland’s murder appalled him, not because an attempt had been made on his own life, which added weight to Nyman’s theory, but because he liked Harland and in their two meetings since Narva, once during the summer in Estonia and another in Berlin when the German government marked the thirtieth anniversary of the fall of the Wall – poorly, in Harland’s view – he had come to see that the old spy’s life added up to something heroic and steadfast, which was rare in their business. He hadn’t clung to the job beyond the end of his personal mission, or his usefulness. He didn’t need SIS, or his country. He’d found another life in another country, as well as a deep love with Ulrike. He’d become an artist, reclaimed his freedom, lived on his own terms. He wasn’t someone who told you much about his inner life, but on the Berlin trip Samson noticed how often he used the word ‘freedom’. That was what Harland fought for – his and other people’s freedom.
He held the glass up to the desk light and pondered the glow in the liquid. Out loud to the room, he said, ‘To you, Bobby. I’m so very sorry.’
Then he pulled his laptop towards him and searched for the live stream from the Congressional Committee on Foreign Affairs in Washington DC. It was the second day of hearings on America’s relations with the Kurds in northern Syria and, in particular, allegations that the Kurdish-American billionaire and Anastasia’s husband, Denis Hisami, was helping to finance military action against US forces and their Turkish allies. Hisami had been caught out by the sudden change in US policy on the Kurds. They were no longer America’s ally in the region and Hisami’s donations had become the subject of outrage in the White House and hysterical attacks on websites. Hisami maintained that the money had been donated before the administration’s abandonment of the Kurds and in any case was being used for humanitarian purposes, such as the rescue and rehabilitation of women enslaved by ISIS. Samson had watched for half an hour the day before and had glimpsed Anastasia sitting with Hisami’s aide, Jim Tulliver, behind Hisami as he was cross-examined by an aggressive congressman from the South. She was as beautiful and composed as ever, but the strain of the last few years was showing and he thought she’d lost too much weight and maybe that the humour had left her eyes.
They hadn’t seen each other in two years. They’d talked and emailed frequently after her return to the States, but then she seemed to suffer a precipitate collapse, not surprising, given what she had endured at the hands of her tormentor, the man she knew as Kirill but who was in fact a sadistic Russian brute named Nikita Bukov. She called Samson one night, distraught and quite unlike herself, and said it would be better if they didn’t speak for a while: she needed to straighten things out in her head; she couldn’t sleep or focus on her work. She told him she’d been traumatised by the events in Macedonia when she, Samson and Naji Touma were all nearly killed, but this was far worse. There were moments when she had no orientation with the real world whatsoever, like when she was imprisoned in a container on the ship, then a metal box. That confinement and the terror were always with her. She couldn’t rid her mind of them.
This exchange was extraordinarily painful for Samson. They loved each other, but there was absolutely nothing he could do, and she wasn’t strong enough to deal with being so frequently in touch yet also separated by five thousand miles. Her husband, now free of the particular round of persecution by the US authorities, had got her the professional help she needed – a new treatment, she implied – and was caring for her with all the love in the world. She said it would be for just a few weeks, but they hadn’t spoken since. The only news he had of her was when she returned to Lesbos, the Greek island where they had met and where the Aysel Hisami Foundation, under her supervision, was trying to deal with the scale of mental-health problems of the people who’d been in the camp for over five years. He had toyed with the idea of flying out to see her, but she hadn’t told him she would be there – he’d just seen her quoted in a story on the CNN news site.
His eyes went to the gap in the photographs on the wall. He’d removed the picture of them on the evening he’d agonised about going to Lesbos. Eventually he’d told himself that if Anastasia was well enough to return to work yet had not contacted him to say she was in Europe, there was no future for them, and he certainly wasn’t going to embarrass them both by dropping in unannounced. He took the photograph down and put it in a drawer and, from that moment, the pain had begun to leave him.
Something had moved in him when he caught sight of her in the proceedings the day before, but now he simply wanted to check she was all right. He found the stream from Congress on C-Span. However, although it was past two o’clock in DC, there was no sign of the session starting. Staffers were milling around the committee room as if they didn’t expect the hearing to
restart soon. There was no sign of Hisami and Anastasia, and no commentary to say what was going on.
He turned the sound down, took out his phone and composed a text message to Jim Tulliver. ‘Robert Harland is dead. Maybe a threat to others involved with the Narva affair. Call me urgently – Samson.’
Then he finished his drink and dialled Harland’s greatest friend, Macy Harp. This wasn’t going to be easy.
Chapter 4
Room 2172
Among members of Congress, the offices in the Cannon Building, on the south side of Independence Avenue, had the reputation of being the worst on Capitol Hill, and those on the fifth floor of that 120-year-old building were known as ‘Siberia’. Originally attic storage space, the fifth floor had been converted to offices to accommodate the newer representatives, and this is where Shera Ricard, the freshman member for California’s 14th District, ended up after winning her election. The offices were cramped, generally had a poor view and were several minutes’ walk from Room 2172 in the Rayburn Building, where the House Foreign Affairs Committee held its hearings. The Cannon was the only office space not served by the Capitol’s underground railway, and a seemingly endless programme of renovation meant that the thud of jackhammers and drills was transmitted through much of the structure’s fabric.
But for all this, Shera Ricard, one of the youngest members of the new intake, remained upbeat and smiling, and she was more than happy to play host while one of the major donors to her campaign, Denis Hisami, was appearing in front of the committee, of which she was a member. She had helped plan his evidence, which had now lasted four hours, and the responses to questions, but the afternoon session, delayed by half an hour already, was going to be the toughest for Hisami.
