The Old Enemy

by Henry Porter

  He had the sense that he was scraping the surface with her; that the level of activity and the number of acquisitions indicated a business acumen and wealth much greater than he thought possible for a woman who had arrived in the States with no money and no contacts. She had achieved many remarkable things, not the least of which was being both present and powerful in American society at the same time as leaving little trace, a most desirable state for an intelligence officer. There were very few words on Mila Daus, and no photographs, save the two that Samson had found published with the account of Arthur Mobius’s death. She was spectral – the Ghost from the East.

  While he worked, Ulrike got up and drifted around, distracted and muttering to herself. He suggested that he go back to the hotel and allow her to get some rest before the funeral, which was only a few hours away, but she shook her head and said, ‘It helps, you being here. I’d like you to stay in the spare room.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ he said.

  ‘What did you find out about her?’

  He closed the laptop. ‘She’s way too powerful to be seen as simply a Russian intelligence asset; a partner, more like. She’s formidable, resourceful, deadly, brilliant and very rich – easily a billionaire by now.’ He paused. ‘All through his troubles, Denis sensed there was an unseen hand. It was Mila Daus. She’s been working against him since he invested in one of her companies, TangKi, which was fronted by Adam Crane. It was her money that Crane was channelling to far-right groups in Europe. He stole from her and from the others unwise enough to invest in TangKi, but it was her scheme. And, of course, it was ultimately Mila Daus who organised the kidnap of Anastasia. Denis and Bobby knew all this, and they were going to reveal it, but I don’t believe they were ready. And all these other names – did you have any luck working out who they were?’

  She moved towards the conservatory door, clutching her cigarettes and lighter to her chest. ‘The young people know all about it. They’re coming to the funeral, so you can talk to them. You are now in charge of this, Samson. Anastasia has the money, but it must be you who decides what happens to all this information. Bobby would want that.’ She leaned heavily against the door frame. ‘Just before he was killed he told me that Daus used some of the old tricks the Stasi used.’ She looked down. Her shoulders heaved and she let out a groan of anguish. Samson got up and went to her and held her. She sobbed silently for several minutes, shuddering with grief. At length she pulled free and dabbed her eyes with a cuff of her shirt. ‘I haven’t been able to do that before now. Sorry. Thank you. I am so sorry.’ She looked away until he raised her head then shot him a fierce look. ‘You get that bitch, Samson.’

  ‘I’ll do everything I can,’ he said. He waited a few seconds. ‘You were about to say something about old tricks.’

  ‘She used blackmail in the same way the Stasi used it to get foreigners to work for them in the old days. It was usually about sex, or fraud – people’s vices. She trapped people and forced them to help her. Bobby mentioned one man – a very well-known person in the United States, who had sex with an under-age girl. Mila set him up and he had to do what she asked when she confronted him with evidence.’

  At that moment Samson’s phone vibrated with a series of messages that had accumulated when he was sitting with Ulrike in the conservatory. One was from Macy and four were from Anastasia. He noticed half a dozen ‘missed call’ notifications. They’d been over a period of two hours. The first message read: ‘Naji saw Stepurin’s name at Vilnius airport hotel. Using his legit passport! We stole Stepurin’s car! Call me!’

  The second text read: ‘Crossed Latvian border. We’re near Bauska. Heading for Riga then Tallinn. We need help with border. Car has Estonian plates but Naji not registered owner. Does that matter?’

  Third text: ‘We’ve been followed since we stopped for fuel. Call me! What do we do?’

  There was a fourth message, but it consisted only of random letters.

  He dialled Anastasia’s number on one phone and texted Tomas on another with the words: ‘You up?’

  When Anastasia answered, he said, ‘Where are you? Are you still being followed?’

  She consulted Naji. ‘On the road to Riga. We got past the Latvian border on Naji’s passport. He knows what to do at borders! Can’t see anyone following, but we are going very fast.’ Samson heard Naji’s voice: ‘Very slow. Just one ninety!’

  His other phone sounded. ‘Okay, I’ll call you back.’ He picked it up. ‘Hi, Tomas, I need your help to get a couple of people you know over the Latvia–Estonia border tonight.’

  Tomas took his time to respond. ‘You are asking me for help to bring people into our country without delay. Who?’

  ‘Anastasia and Naji. They’re in a car belonging to Stepurin. They stole it.’

  ‘So what are you giving us in return?’

  ‘As much as Ulrike knows.’

  Tomas didn’t fall for that. ‘I’d prefer to know what you know, Samson.’

  ‘I’ll tell you all I know, and that’s not a lot.’

  Tomas let out a laugh. ‘What you know now is a fraction of what there is to know. What about the things you learn about in the next few hours and days? Will you give us access to those?’

  ‘We can discuss it.’

  ‘I believe that is a yes.’

  Samson said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Your friends need to go to Valka on the border. They are probably on the A1, so they will have to go across country to the A3. That will take them longer. I will need you to provide the registration of the car. When they get to the border, they will leave the car in Latvia and cross on foot. At the border they need to say, “Mr Sikula is expecting us.” I’ll need a phone number for them and they must share their location with me on WhatsApp. I’ll see you tomorrow morning for the debriefing that you promise now. We have an agreement, Samson. That is good.’

  Samson phoned Anastasia and gave her the instructions. For good measure, he asked her to share her location with him also – he needed to know how close they were to the rendezvous. He heard her relaying all this to Naji and telling him to slow down. ‘He says we will be there in one and a half hours.’

  He conveyed the information to Tomas then started watching the app for their location. A pulsing blue circle appeared near a town called Limbazi. He could see they were heading directly east and would hit the A3 at Valmeira. It occurred to him that if he was tracking Anastasia with such ease, it was very likely that Stepurin either had access to one of their phones or had a tracker fitted to the car he was using. He sent a message to Tomas. ‘Can you give them cover before they reach the border?’ Immediately the reply came.

  ‘Not easy with this notice, but I will see what we can do.’

  Chapter 25

  Zoe

  Speed was the only thing that separated them from the two cars that were, at most, only ten minutes behind them. That, and an unpredictable route which took them first north towards the border then east. They passed through shuttered parishes and municipalities whose names flashed into Anastasia’s consciousness – Naukšēni, Kārķi, Vēveri, Ērģeme – and tore along dead-straight roads, the scent of forests and fields in springtime coming from the Audi’s ventilation. Naji didn’t talk, which was a blessing. She wanted him to concentrate. His driving terrified her, but she had quite given up trying to get him to slow down. She kept her eyes on her screen, knowing that Estonian intelligence and Samson were watching their progress. But, as Naji reminded her, that very same phone was likely to be revealing their position to the two cars in pursuit. It was almost certainly her phone that had led them to the farm in Macedonia, and, he added, the reason they were now running from Russian hit men. He also observed that a tracker might be fitted to a valuable car like this Audi Q7. They debated swapping to Naji’s phone, but he said there were very good reasons not to give his number to KaPo, so they kept using hers.

  Th
ey reached a string of small, darkened houses spread over about half a kilometre, a place that had neither name nor street lighting. About three hundred metres beyond the point where the houses petered out, there was a truck stop tucked into the woods, visible because of the neon light proclaiming the name Valdis Bar. They shot past it, then Naji abruptly pulled up and began to reverse. ‘Turn your phone off, please,’ he said. ‘It is better for us.’

  ‘What are you doing?’

  ‘Wait for some minutes,’ he said. He drove up to the building. Cars and a few small trucks were parked randomly at the front. Music and swirling lights came from inside. They could have been in Tennessee, she thought. Naji jumped out and went inside. Anastasia undid her seat belt and followed. But before she reached the door Naji backed out, propelled by a jabbing finger that belonged to a large man in braces and a leather cap. Naji put his hands up in surrender and started speaking rapidly in a mixture of Latvian and English, with a few German words thrown in. ‘Das ist ein russisches Auto,’ he kept insisting. The man stopped and looked over to the Audi. ‘You can have the car and this lady will give you €1,000,’ said Naji, selling the deal with all the skill of his youth in Syria behind a cart full of second-hand trainers.

  The man asked, ‘Woher hast du das auto?’ Where did you get the car?

  ‘Wir haben es den russischen Gangstern gestohlen,’ said Naji with an enormous grin. We took it from Russian crooks. He added: ‘We need to borrow another car to go to Valka.’ Then he corrected himself. ‘Rent a car from you, mein Herr.’

  The negotiation went on for five minutes. The man began to find Naji quite the comedian and presently Anastasia handed over all the cash in her wallet – €1,300 – in exchange for the keys of an old green Passat. They were given the instruction to leave the car at the Alko 1000 market near the border post and place the key in the gap behind the rear bumper. Naji checked the petrol, kicked the tyres and got into the driving seat.

  She shook her head. ‘You need a rest. I will drive now, for the simple reason that I rented the car, and this gentleman doesn’t want a lunatic behind the wheel.’

  He rolled from the seat. ‘Phone – have you turned off?’

  She nodded.

  About five kilometres along the road they saw two sets of lights close together, speeding towards them. ‘I thought they were following us,’ she said. ‘They wouldn’t be coming from the other direction, surely.’

  ‘Headlights are different. Other people come from Russia. We are not so far from Russia.’ Not far over that border, she thought, was the dismal forest where she had been held and tormented by the man calling himself Kirill. She found herself smiling at the memory of the preposterous little sadist in his hunting outfit.

  They agreed it was best for them to get off the road. They took a forest track that led to a clearing where three trailers loaded with stripped tree trunks were parked. She steered behind one of the trailers so the Passat was hidden but she could still see the end of the track. She switched off the lights and reached for a bottle of water in the side pocket of her bag. Naji sank into his seat and rested his knees on the dashboard. He dozed, but she couldn’t sleep and watched vehicles flash past the turning in both directions more times than she could count.

  Samson saw that the pulsing circle had stopped moving and texted, ‘Okay?’ but got no reply. He wasn’t going to start worrying yet. They would need to rest up.

  Ulrike was looking at him absently. She was about to say something, but her head snapped up. ‘Verdammt! That’s the garden door. I told them to stay away!’ She moved to the conservatory and called out softly into the dark. A man’s voice answered her. ‘Mama, ich bin es – Rudi.’

  She shook her head and waited. Rudi came in first and kissed his mother on both cheeks. A few seconds later, in came Zoe Freemantle. She took in Samson, nodded to him and moved into the centre of the conservatory.

  ‘So, we meet properly at last – Zoe Harland. I owe you an apology, Mr Samson.’

  ‘Harland?’

  ‘Robert Harland was my dad. My mother’s name was Freemantle. Didn’t Ulrike tell you?’

  ‘I was about to,’ she said. ‘I didn’t expect you to come here. We had discussed that you were going to stay in the apartment for safety.’ She looked at her son. ‘Rudi, why did you come?’

  He returned a rather hopeless look and said something in German that Samson didn’t catch, but he saw the apology in his eyes. His mother nodded and turned to Zoe. ‘You’d better explain everything.’

  ‘Please do,’ said Samson coolly, and sat down at a table, as it happened in the old Windsor-back chair that Harland had said was the only thing he’d kept from his life in Britain. But that turned out to be untrue. He had his spy mother’s cookbook as well as an English daughter, one that he’d been hired to babysit.

  ‘Are we smoking inside?’ asked Zoe. ‘Would you mind if I . . .?’ Ulrike handed her the ashtray and her cigarettes.

  She lit up, inhaled and smiled at Rudi, who was returning with beer from the kitchen. ‘My father had an affair with a woman named Gillian, my mum. That was in 1990, when she was at the British embassy in Berlin. It was, shall we say, a very brief encounter. A fling. My mum was a career diplomat and she didn’t want to marry him, but they pretended for a while so she could keep her job and her baby – me. I think they may even have lied about getting married.’

  Ulrike nodded.

  ‘Yes, they did lie, but who was to say otherwise? And after my birth, they went their separate ways and my mum was transferred to the embassy in Washington. She was talented, and they didn’t want to lose her, and I guess my dad put in enough appearances to make everyone feel comfortable. My mother married a man called Billy Freemantle and everything worked out. Dad paid for all my education and, when I was eighteen, we started meeting up and, later, he helped me with some problems.’ She glanced at Ulrike. ‘Like my mother, I’m an addict. I still smoke and drink, but I don’t do heroin.’

  ‘But you use cannabis,’ said Samson. ‘I was out at the cabin earlier.’

  ‘Oh, okay,’ she said, unfazed. ‘I think that was yours, Rudi.’ She gave him a soft punch to his arm. ‘I grew up in DC and New York, but mostly in Paris, where my mother and stepfather decided to live. He was an oil engineer with his own company. Retired early and devoted the rest of their lives to French society and getting plastered. They were socially grand, if you know what I mean, and had loads of money. They both died early. My mother’s heart stopped when she was in the ocean at Biarritz in August and Billy had followed by that Christmas. I was at university in Paris at the time, and it’s fair to say things got a little out of hand. But, hey, I completed my course, came top of the year and started a postgrad in experimental math. By that time I was using, and was screwing up in every way possible. But I got my masters. A couple of years later, Dad picked me up, got me into rehab and kept me kind of on the straight and narrow. That took two years, and he paid for it all because I’d been through all the money my mother left me. All of it!’ She looked at Ulrike. ‘Have I left anything out? Oh yes, my name is actually Zoe Harland, though I didn’t tell my father about the change. And Rudi and I are an item. We’ve worked on my father’s project for about eighteen months now, together with your Syrian friend and many others. I have the necessary skills, but Naji is at the superhuman level.’

  Ulrike turned away and shook her head.

  ‘And, as you can see, Ulrike doesn’t approve. I guess it seems kind of incestuous that her stepdaughter is with her son. And she isn’t happy about my past.’ Neither Ulrike nor Rudi reacted. ‘That’s about everything,’ she said, with a small concluding bow.

  ‘And the apology?’ said Samson.

  ‘I told them at GreenState that you were stalking me, and I made out you were kind of a lech. Sorry. I know you had my back and that wasn’t your kind of work, but I didn’t know who you were until my father’s friend
Macy told me.’

  Ulrike said, ‘I must now try to sleep.’ She moved to Samson and took his hand. ‘Thank you for coming, and thank you for being the person you are. Your room, if you need it, is right at the top of the stairs. And if you’re all going to talk all night, you need to do it quietly because I can hear everything in our bedroom.’

  Samson tapped his screen. There was no movement.

  ‘Are you watching Naji?’ asked Zoe, getting up to try to see his screen. ‘Is that what the call was about when we came in?’

  He lowered the phone. ‘No need to worry about that now. Shall we sit in the conservatory?’

  ‘So you’re the boss now?’ she said, collapsing into the sofa next to Rudi and hooking a leg across his thigh. He thought she was a little drunk.

  ‘Yes, and I need to know everything that you know – I mean, everything.’ Samson took in Rudi Rosenharte, whom he’d fleetingly met in Berlin with Bobby and Ulrike. He was very tall and had a slightly Slavic cast to a face that was open and engaged. Willingness shone from his eyes, and sensitivity too. Where Rudi had bearing, Zoe was, despite her good looks, ill at ease and defensive in manner. He had noticed that part of her at GreenState, but he had imagined that she’d be more self-assured in conversation. They were a strikingly handsome couple.

  ‘So is this it?’ she said, picking up the Nomenclature of Colours. ‘Is this the mother lode then? Did you find it out at the cabin? We thought something might be there. Can I look?’

  Samson moved forward. ‘I’ll take that for the moment,’ he said.