The Old Enemy

by Henry Porter

  Minutes after this she received another text from him but from a different number, asking her to a quick breakfast at Place du Café, ten minutes’ walk from the hospital. She shouldered her bag, touched Denis’s arm and said she would be gone for forty-five minutes. There was no response and she left the room without a backward glance. Sometimes she felt he was there with her, but that morning there had been no hint that he understood what was going on around him, no sense of that watchful intelligence. Later that day he would have a brain scan, to see if he had in fact suffered a stroke during the procedure to regularise his heartbeat, which was now the doctors’ preferred theory: ‘Ischemic infarctions in the territory of the middle cerebral artery,’ as Carrew had put it, without a trace of his habitual optimism.

  She was glad to be outside and walked briskly, working through the implications of Reid’s behaviour. His attempt to gain her confidence had been so clumsy she had always half suspected him, and had said nothing of importance to him. Yet he’d gained knowledge of Denis’s condition, and that must have been relayed to Mila Daus. The less immediate question was how long he’d been working with her. Did the relationship go all the way back to the business at TangKi, when a co-investor and Denis’s friend Gil Leppo seemed to be the lone traitor who had conspired in her kidnap to put pressure on Denis? And she wondered how Samson could use the information about Reid’s relationship with Mila Daus.

  The Place du Café was a large, busy establishment with orders being shouted out and a churn of young Beltway professionals carrying non-disposable coffee cups. She took a table at the far side of the café, ordering from the waitress as she sat down, coffee and toast that she was unlikely to eat. There was no sign of Samson. Two boisterous young men in their thirties jumped on the table next to her. A woman, also in a suit, joined them, and they chatted about the unprecedented spring heat and a tennis tournament in which they’d all competed. Then they left. She glanced at her phone. There were no messages. She called Samson and got his voicemail. ‘I’m here,’ she said, rather forlornly, because she had felt a lift at the idea of seeing him. They hadn’t seen each other since Estonia, and they needed to talk, though she wasn’t sure what she should or could say. She waited a few minutes, accepted a refill, toyed with the toast and called again. Nothing.

  Her phone vibrated. ‘Where the hell are you?’ she demanded.

  ‘The item you asked to be returned,’ said a woman’s voice. ‘It’s beneath the banquette to your right.’

  Anastasia felt below the banquette. It was a briefcase – Denis’s briefcase.

  ‘Have you located it, Mrs Hisami? Good. You have a great day, now.’

  She brought the briefcase to her own chair and put money on top of the bill. As she looked for her waitress, she saw Special Agent Reiner turn, fold a copy of the Post and look at her over his glasses. He nodded to her, got up and walked out.

  She left the Place du Café a few minutes later and waited outside until she saw a red cab, which she hailed. She told the driver to circle while she made calls. She dialled Tulliver, without success, then got Samson, who was driving and on speaker, and told him about the text sent by the FBI pretending it was from him and the briefcase.

  Samson understood immediately the significance of the briefcase covertly returned to Anastasia by the FBI. It chimed with the CIA’s intervention in the street in Tallinn and the news that a lawyer from one of the most expensive firms in Manhattan had been hired – God knows by whom – to spring Angel so that he was free to help Tulliver locate the computer. They now had everything except the code to access the computer and proof of Daus’s identity. These were enormous challenges, but what he dwelt on as they headed on the 270 to the city of Frederick was what the covert help from two intelligence agencies meant. He sounded out the Bird and got a surprisingly cogent answer. ‘Those two senior officers wouldn’t be acting without the knowledge of their superiors so that means there’s a struggle inside Executive with the British sucking up to the White House, which, for reasons we cannot fathom, is keen to keep Russia out of the story of the attack on Congress.’

  ‘What are those reasons?’

  ‘Too soon to say,’ said the Bird. Samson glanced over. The madness in his eyes for once was replaced by thoughtfulness. ‘But if we can prove Daus is the former Stasi beauty queen and that she’s actively working for Vlad the Impaler, a lot of the rest will take care of itself.’

  The traffic was heavy and just past Frederick they came to a stop with an accident involving a truck and a boat transporter. The boat, which had fallen from the trailer into the bank to the right, reminded Samson of his trip across the North Sea.

  ‘Ah yes, Gus. He died, you know. A heart attack the day after you left,’ said the Bird.

  ‘I’m very sorry to hear that. What about Fleur?’

  ‘She gets the boat, and her freedom. Gus was a very brave man, but extremely keen on the sauce and an absolute demon to live with on a boat, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  ‘I’d have liked to have known about his drinking.’

  He passed a hand across his forehead. ‘Slipped my mind. A lot going on, what with Macy and so forth.’

  ‘Macy and so forth?’

  ‘I am afraid Macy is on his way out. Like Bobby, he’s been given a few months. But in Macy’s case there’s absolutely nothing to be done. It’s his liver. He’s given it quite a pasting these last few years.’ The Bird looked at him. ‘I’m sorry, but I thought you needed to hear. He wants you to know, but he’s never going to tell you himself because he’s that kind of bloody fool Englishman. He has plans for you to take over Hendricks Harp and he was asking me what I thought about that when you bowled into the office the other day. Loves you like a son, he does.’ He stopped. ‘You’d do well, running Hendricks Harp.’

  Samson felt a profound sadness wash over him. Macy was, in truth, the best friend he had, but the idea of succeeding him at Hendricks Harp was ridiculous. It wasn’t him.

  ‘I know you’re very fond of him,’ the Bird continued, ‘even though Macy is on the slippery side.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Samson, to both those things.

  ‘Everyone’s moving on – Bobby, Gus, and now Macy – and they’re leaving the fight to the likes of you and those impressive young people I met in Tallinn. Same fight, same old enemy.’

  They stopped on a rural road so that the Bird could watch a bull elk sloshing in a stream a little distance from the road. He took the opportunity to relieve himself and, as he did so, shouted over his shoulder that the Lakota tribe, members of the Great Sioux nation, valued the elk for its sexual prowess; male babies were given an elk tooth to ensure lifelong courage and potency.

  The entrance to Seneca Ridge was so inconspicuous they missed it and had to turn back. They found the gate and a lodge hidden around a bend. A man wearing a green jacket with ‘Seneca Ridge Staff’ printed on the breast pocket looked at their passports, made a note of the Range Rover’s plate and called up to the ridge, as he put it. The gates opened and they travelled up the winding drive to the cluster of houses they knew well from the drone footage, parked and got out. The door to Gaspar’s quarters opened and a man in hiking clothes and lightweight boots exited, his hand outstretched.

  ‘It’s an honour to meet you, General,’ he said. ‘Glad you could make it.’ He did not offer a hand to Samson, but merely nodded in his direction and turned towards the open double doors. The Bird shook his head and winked at him.

  They entered a wide hallway with walls filled with old guns, cases of medals, and nineteenth-century photographs of hunters standing on and around slaughtered animals. Further on, there were displays of Bowie knives, a moccasin jacket with tassels and a confederate cap and flag. Samson took in Gaspar: an edgy manner, bodybuilder’s neck and forearms, a small, downturned mouth and eyes set too close together. He was as tall as Samson yet seemed to be overly conscious of the Bird towering over him. Apa
rt from his very blue eyes, Gaspar was unremarkable – more like a construction worker or a plumber than a doctor, certainly not someone who seemed capable of ordering the murder of Robert Harland and the attack on Denis Hisami in Congress, or, indeed, the subsequent liquidation of all the deadbeat assassins hired by his hunting buddy Anatoly Stepurin. And there was no suspicion in his eyes whatsoever, even though he had apparently signed off on the contracts on Samson by Miroslav Rajavic – the Matador – and, subsequently, the Dutch lowlife Pim Visser. Samson doubted whether he ever knew these names, so remote was he from the actual fact of the killings and attempted killings.

  ‘I have something to show you, gentlemen,’ said Gaspar, moving them on from the displays in the hallway. ‘We can take a glass of lemonade while we talk about the gun.’

  They turned into a huge room that made the Bird gasp. From floor to ceiling were arranged severed heads, stuffed bodies, amputated limbs, stretched hide and mounted skins; and tusks, teeth, tails and claws – evidence of Gaspar’s lifetime asymmetric war against the animal kingdom. It was a revolting sight. The Bird looked up at the head of an elephant; next to it the heads of a rhinoceros, a hippo and a buffalo, each with its mouth agape, eyes replaced with lifeless glass. ‘You killed all these?’ he said.

  ‘Yep, every last one of them.’

  ‘And the leopard?’ said the Bird, turning to the wall on the left, where the big cat posed on a branch.

  Gaspar nodded. He had his hands in his pockets and rocked on his heels, partly to seem taller but also from excitement and pride. ‘The elephant, rhino and buffalo were all nailed with the Nitro Express.’

  ‘Were they charging you?’ asked the Bird with a deadly cool.

  ‘No, General, they were not. But they were close. I was in some peril.’

  The Bird looked round silently. His eyes fell on a stuffed crocodile at the far end of the charnel house. Its mouth was open to accommodate a bottle of Glenmorangie whisky on a small silver platter.

  Samson saw that he could stand it no more. ‘Perhaps we should look at the gun,’ he said.

  A wooden case had been laid on the table with three sizes of ammunition lined up in front. Gaspar opened it reverentially and out fluttered the bill of sale from more than a century before and details of the weapon’s ownership since. Gaspar handed them to the Bird, who passed them to Samson. ‘My friend here will examine these. He’s the expert. He’s one of the best shots in Europe, though is far too modest to say so.’

  ‘Oh, right,’ said Gaspar. This was the first time he had really acknowledged Samson.

  Gaspar picked up the gunstock and barrels and snapped them together, then fitted the forend to the underside of the two barrels. He hefted it, broke it open to reveal the twin chambers and handed it to the Bird. He selected the largest bullet, which was over three inches long. ‘With this gun, I recommend this 450 Nitro Express black powder cartridge, which propels a .458-inch-diameter 480 grain bullet to a muzzle velocity 2,150 feet per second.’

  The Bird nodded as though he knew what the hell Gaspar was talking about, examined the workmanship and engraving and looked down the chambers. He gave it back to Gaspar.

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ continued Gaspar, ‘I had quite a bit of fun in Africa showing this weapon to a friend of mine who doubted its destructive power. There was this baboon out on the savannah. I loaded one of these babies into the breach, took aim at said baboon and fired, and, well, there wasn’t a lot left of that ugly old monkey.’ He stopped. ‘Lemonade, gentlemen? Where’s my lemonade? Where’s Hector with my goddamn lemonade?’ He went to the door and yelled.

  A small Hispanic man bearing a tray appeared with a flurry of apologies, set it down and poured the lemonade. He handed a glass to Samson and Gaspar but missed the Bird’s hand and the lemonade spilled on to the green baize of the tabletop. In his rush to mop up the spilled liquid, Hector knocked over the bullets that had been carefully ranked by size by Gaspar and they clattered on to the floor.

  ‘My fault,’ said the Bird, stooping to pick them up. ‘Entirely my fault. Must be the thrill of seeing this beautiful gun.’ Samson saw him palm two of the bullets and wondered what he planned to do with them. But his attention went to Gaspar, who had put the rifle down and was looking furiously at Hector. ‘You can leave,’ said Gaspar. ‘Take your money at the end of the week and do not come back. Just leave!’

  ‘But it was my fault,’ said the Bird.

  Gaspar shook his head. Hector left. ‘Okay, so let’s go and try her out. You want to shoot the gun, right?’ He slapped his forehead. ‘You brought the deposit money, should you wish to buy this beauty. Twenty thou was what we agreed.’

  ‘Mr Malek has the money.’

  ‘You want to see it now?’ asked Samson. ‘I can easily go and get it.’

  ‘You left twenty grand in the car? Jeez!’

  ‘You have good security,’ said Samson.

  ‘Maybe you should go and get it. Meet us out back. It will be obvious to you. Take the path between the buildings, Mr Malek.’ Gaspar mispronounced the name May-lek. That he was a racist prick and treated him like the help did not bother Samson in the least. He needed to look around. He left by the front door and retrieved two bundles of hundred-dollar bills in a transparent envelope from the locked glove compartment of the car, divided them and put them in his inside pockets. He saw he had messages, one of which was from Zillah Dee. ‘Meet tonight or tomorrow?’ Samson replied, ‘Tonight.’

  He locked the door and took the path between the buildings to the service area at the back, which formed a kind of alley. His behind resting on the strata of rock that jutted from the ground, left by the builders as an interesting effect, Hector was smoking and looking absolutely desperate.

  Samson stopped by him. ‘I’m so sorry about that.’

  Hector looked up. He didn’t bother to conceal that he’d been crying. He shook his head and tried to pull himself together. Samson placed a hand on his shoulder. ‘It was completely unfair.’

  ‘Thank you, sir. It is my daughter. She needs treatment for cancer. I had this job and one at the store to pay for it. Now I have just one job and that doesn’t pay well.’

  Samson stepped back. ‘I’ll give you money.’ He opened his jacket to reveal one of the wads of cash. ‘I just have to show Gaspar I’ve got it with me. If you meet me here later, it’s yours.’ Hector didn’t know what to say. ‘But I wonder if there’s something you can do for me.’

  Hector nodded, now open to any hope.

  ‘I’m an investigator, and I need to prove something about Mr Gaspar’s wife. Can you get me something with her DNA on it? A comb, a hairbrush or a toothbrush – anything that definitely has her DNA. Hair would be really good. A jumper might do it.’

  Hector considered this. ‘How much money do you have?’

  ‘I have twenty thousand on me. I will give you half whatever happens, because there’s no question in my mind that the person whose money this is would want you to have it. I will give you the other half if you manage to come up with something. I don’t want to put you in any danger, but if you think you can manage it, I’d be very grateful.’

  Hector looked away and thought. ‘Okay, I do it. They are not good people.’

  ‘Believe me, I know this, Hector. We have a deal. You keep an eye out for our return and I’ll make sure you have that money.’

  He found the Bird and Gaspar talking beside a Pinzgauer, a German utility vehicle. The Bird was already looking pretty weary but Gaspar was so keen to impress he hadn’t noticed. They all got in and set off down the ridge, following a track into the woods. Gaspar was opening up with unmediated theories about black people, Mexicans, Jews and Arabs then suddenly brought the vehicle to such a shuddering halt that the gun case and metal ammunition box slid from the seat beside Samson. Gaspar, now wearing wrap-around reflective sunglasses, jumped out of the vehicle and jogged to
a grassy patch in a clearing thirty paces from the track. ‘You gentlemen need to look at this!’ he called out.

  They climbed down reluctantly. In the tall grass, a bear had keeled over on its side and expired. One massive front paw was raised, as if trying to ward off its attacker. ‘Have a guess what killed this sucker?’

  ‘You?’ said the Bird, quietly.

  ‘Kind of, yeah! That little plug in the ground you see right there is an M-44 trap. The animal comes along, chews and pulls at the bait, and bang! The spring-powered ejector is triggered and sends a plume of cyanide into the animal’s face. This site right here has killed two bears, a coyote and a bob cat.’ He looked down at the bear. ‘That’s the biggest yet – six hundred pounds or more.’

  ‘Aren’t these illegal?’ asked Samson, as appalled as the Bird.

  ‘No sirree! Not if you have contacts in the Wildlife Services Agency. Hell, I’m doing their job for those sons of bitches.’ He made a call to his staff and told them to dispose of the bear and charge the M-44 with a new capsule of poison. Then his eyes followed a movement in a glade dappled with spring sunshine. A deer looked inquisitively in their direction. ‘A Northern white-tail,’ said Gaspar. ‘Go get the gun. May-lek and I can show the general what killing power looks like.’

  Samson didn’t move.

  ‘Didn’t you hear me, May-lek?’

  ‘It’s Malek, Mr Gaspar, and I did hear you, but that animal will be gone before I return. And we really want to see the accuracy of the Nitro Express on the target you promised us.’

  Gaspar wasn’t listening. He had pulled a pistol from his pocket and, seconds later, fired. The deer jumped and tore off, uninjured. Samson caught a look of hatred briefly flood the Bird’s face. ‘Not now,’ he said under his breath as they walked back to the vehicle. ‘Focus on what we came for. There’s been a development. When we get back, delay him for ten minutes inside the house.’

  A target had been set up a little way on, but before Gaspar put the gun together he wanted sight of the money and made some show of counting it. They fired the gun with different sizes of ammunition, the longest shells giving a kick twice as powerful as the two-inch ones. The Bird, who, like his brother, was a very good shot, effortlessly blew an almost circular hole with six bullets in the centre of the target. Samson did less well but bettered Gaspar, who reminded them he was selling the gun because of a shoulder injury.