‘Our position is satisfactory. Where do we stand? Specifically, we are in a forest area, quite close to the Bug river. We are south of Wlodawa and—’
He heard the impatience. No one else he knew would have employed pedantry with the director general. ‘Do we have a close surveillance aspect on our targets? What I mean is – damn it, Christopher, in words of one syllable – have we control? Are they, the targets, buttoned down?’
‘Yes.’ Lawson had not hesitated. He spoke firmly.
‘Do you still believe the situation on which you briefed me?’
‘Yes.’
‘You have the crossing-point under surveillance, and the manpower to take action?’
‘To both, yes.’
‘Is it soon?’
‘Within the next several hours is my estimate.’
‘Should you have more bodies, additional back-up?’
‘No.’
‘Christopher, I’m saying this once, not again, and believe me, the image of failure runs in my mind – it’s an apocalypse. Failure is not acceptable. I’m asking whether you should have the cavalry with you, Christopher.’
‘Nice offer – no, thank you.’
‘I can lift a telephone. I can get a battalion of Polish troops there, wherever it is, within an hour, two at the most. I can get that area made so secure that a rabbit—’
‘We’re well placed, Francis, and the cavalry is not required – for reasons we discussed, and agreed, in your office. I have the resources I need.’
‘To put my mind at rest, you confirm that you have control?’
‘Tight control, Francis. It was all predictable and there are no surprises.’
‘And the agent? How is he performing?’
He told his director general, very frankly, of his assessment of the agent. He was staring across the camping area and could see up the track and almost to the road, and he looked for the car that would bring back Bugsy and Deadeye, and thought he knew what they would bring and what they would report. ‘I really should be getting on with things, Francis, so if you’ll excuse me …’
He ended the call.
The previous evening, Tadeuz Komiski had convinced himself – without effort – that the persistence of the rain excused him from going and looking for wood for the priest to burn in his home. Wet wood, however well seasoned, would merely smoke out the man’s living room. But that morning the sun was out and his excuse was no longer valid.
Because of the expense of refilling it, he would not waste what fuel he had in his tractor’s tank. He would go early into the forest and check where there were branches brought down by the weight of the rain and the strength of the wind, those that had already died, and he would look for the heaps where the forestry men had stacked timbers that were too thin, too split or too knotted to serve as good pit props. When, if, he found sufficient wood he would walk back to his home and collect his tractor. Komiski told himself that it was only because Father Jerzy had asked for wood that he would look for it, he would have done it for no one else.
He did not take the dog, or the shotgun, but he had hitched on his shoulder the short bow-saw with its razor teeth.
He did not use the tracks that were rutted from the woodsmen’s vehicles, but he went as a wraith among the trees. Maybe it was the tiredness, maybe it was because he had not eaten – neither had his dog – since the priest had left the pie, maybe it was from the sense of freedom after closing the door of the house behind him, but he had not worked out with any precision what route he would take on his way to look for wood that was not too sodden to be burned.
The priest had asked, Was it when you were a child and living in this house that the guilt was born? Now, Tadeuz Komiski realized he was close, within a hundred metres, of where that guilt had been conceived – and there were voices.
Voices carried in the quiet of the forest. He crouched, then sank to his knees. He saw two men. He recognized one, saw the close-cut scalp, the power of the shoulders and the heavy leather coat that fell to the man’s hips. He had not seen the second before, and thought him younger. His hair not cut short, he seemed to have a less threatening body and there was a limp to his stride. They were within a few steps of where the first grave had been, a few metres from where the later storm and the rains had uncovered the bones. Tadeuz Komiski had moved those bones, had carried them as far as he was able in an awkward, dangling bundle, then had retraced his steps to retrieve an arm bone and a whole skeletal foot that had fallen away from the main frame of the long-dead corpse. Then he had made the second grave and had buried the man whose death had bred the curse.
The sun dappled down through the trees. Flies danced in its light. The birds, warmed by the sun, flitted above where the grave had been. Had they known where to look they would have walked a dozen paces to the right. The excavated pit was a metre and a half in length, a half-metre in width and a metre in depth. Tadeuz Komiski came here often, was drawn to the place, which was the torment of the curse. Now, all these years later, the grave was a slight indent in the ground. It lay between two pines, one of which had a double trunk. There were enough markers for him to know exactly where the grave had been – and where they had been, the young man and the girl. Now the grave was filled with leaves and needles from the pines, and a branch had come down on it two winters back, obscuring most of it. The priest had said: You do not have to answer me – but the only palliative for guilt is confession.
They moved on.
He could not have said why he followed them. His back now was to the great mound of ashes, the grave for a quarter of a million persons, but it was the first grave of one man that had brought down the curse on him. The sun climbed, and he moved between trees, used cover and did not feel the aches in his old joints. Tadeuz Komiski had the skills gained from a lifetime spent – where ghosts were – in the forest. He told himself he would be satisfied to find out their destination. Then he would turn and look again for dried wood.
Their pace had quickened, and they passed – and did not know it – the place where he had reburied the bones.
Reuven Weissberg said, ‘They were betrayed. My grandmother was betrayed and my grandfather. From her being taken to the ghetto in Wlodawa, from him being captured by the Nazi Army, they faced total and continuous betrayal. They were betrayed by individuals, and by systems and by nationalities … and I am of their blood. Did individuals, systems or nations care about them? None did. They were not important, not valued. They had only one chance, and it was from themselves. Destiny was in their own hands – from every other quarter, every point around them, there was treachery. I have been taught it and I believe it. In me, what happened here – in that camp – is still alive. Do you understand, Johnny?’
The eyes, gleaming, dangerous and bright, overwhelmed Carrick.
They were near to the river where it narrowed, and upstream from where the floodwater had spread over fields. Trees sprouted on the steep banks of either side, and the force of the flow was intimidating. They had reached the small boat and were near to the gathering, dismal, bowed shoulders and dropped heads, of the Russians and Josef Goldmann. Little columns of cigarette smoke eddied up from them. He no longer fought. He had seen the site of the Sobibor camp, and had heard the story, and in his mind was the frail, emaciated woman in black, with the pure white hair, the survivor who had fashioned a grandson. He understood. Almost, he was part of this place. What he had done in the night, beside a lake, before taking his share of the weight of the boat was forgotten.
‘Yes, sir,’ Carrick said.
Chapter 18
16 April 2008
Carrick stayed close to Reuven Weissberg.
Hours were there to be killed, the sun had started to drop from its full height and the shadows of the trees were thrust on to the river. Mostly Carrick just looked at the power and drive of its flow. Reuven Weissberg had talked to him about building a church in a village outside Perm, paying for its construction, and had said it was what many
did who were in business and who wanted to put something as a legacy into the community. Carrick had nodded and let him talk, had no interest in a church built by a Jew in a place he couldn’t picture. He thought the idea tacky and sentimental, but he didn’t say so and made a pretence of listening.
He watched the far side of the river.
Behind him, hidden, was the boat and the length of rope. The greater preoccupation in Carrick’s mind was getting a rope across the river, then using it as a line to cling to and heave on while they were in the boat. Pretty bloody incredible that the height of the river had not been predicted, or its strength, but he hadn’t criticized.
When he watched the far bank of the Bug it was without enthusiasm. Between where he sat, near to Reuven Weissberg, sharing the same patch of damp sand, leaning against the same wet tree trunk, and that far bank, the river careered by. He watched the far bank, the mess of sprig bushes and taller trees where the base and the roots were submerged, the coloured border marker, and tried to keep his head and his eyeline up. If he did not, he saw the river’s pace and drive, the dislodged trees it carried. If he didn’t watch that far bank, well lit by the sun, he saw the water and the debris running fast in it, and he would think of the boat, and darkness.
He was far from anything that was familiar. Back-up seemed beyond reach.
Carrick – tired, cold, wet, hungry – believed that only Reuven Weissberg cared for him.
He could make out a slight path that came out of the far trees, then dropped down to reach the water’s edge. Maybe deer used it, or pigs, or foxes. The longer he stared at the path, the better he saw it. There would be a torch flashed along that bank, and the answering light would be the signal from Reuven Weissberg that they should move along and get opposite to where they now sat.
What was being brought that would bring the big boss to the Godforsaken side of a river on Poland’s frontier? What was of such value? Not drugs – they came in bulk in container lorries. Not girls – they could be brought, he assumed, by the busload from Ukraine. Not forged passports and not bogus Rolex watches. Not computer chips and not cartons of contraband cigarettes. Didn’t leave much that could take priority on Reuven Weissberg’s shopping list.
He thought of weapons. Looking at the little path across the river, he had gone back over the weaponry he knew from days in Iraq. The improvised explosive device, which had damn near shredded his leg, could have been put together by an engineer – or a car mechanic or an electrician – in the Basra equivalent of a lock-up garage. Rocket-propelled grenades and their launchers were washing about all over Europe after the Balkans fighting. The market was saturated. Ground-to-air missiles would be harder, if they were required to bring down an airliner on approach to or take-off from Charles de Gaulle, Fiumicino, Schiphol or Heathrow, but three or four would be big bulk in their protective casings, and as much as the boat could carry, and there would have to be an easier way to do a border than in darkness and across the Bug in flood.
He doubted ground-to-air missiles were enough to bring Reuven Weissberg here, certainly not Josef Goldmann. A former paratrooper with a hole in his leg from scrapping with jihadists was hardly the man for deployment on attachment to the anti-terror people, infiltration into a Muslim community and its mosque. Not even to be considered. Didn’t matter. The Pimlico office of SCD10 had been cleared out one Tuesday morning in March two years back, had gone up to the Yard in best bib and tucker, had sat in a curtained-off area at the back of a lecture theatre with a few anonymous others and had listened to a lecture on the big three. They were microbiological weapons, chemical weapons and nuclear weapons. The lecturer had been a spook, and his name had not been given. He had not used the word if, but had talked of when. It had not made a deal of sense then, and Carrick had gone back to Pimlico and got on with reading up on the background biographies of Jed and Baz, club owners …
He thought of Josef Goldmann. Thought of Goldmann’s pretty wife, decent children, swank house, respect in the City and the social scene of smart galleries and top-grade parties – thought that only weapons of mass destruction would bring him out to this wet bloody riverbank with a forest that had been a killing ground behind him, the river and the bloody Belarus border in front. The spook lecturer, from Box 500 on the Embankment, had talked of an explosion that scattered lethal germs, and an explosion that scattered an aerosol effect of nerve-gas droplets, and an explosion that spread radiation from a dirty bomb.
Carrick could not cope with the thought of it. Did not try to. Blanked it and blocked it. Felt the warmth and strength of Reuven Weissberg alongside him.
They brought the food in two brown-paper bags. They had bought rolls, fruit and cans of Coke. It was long past midday, and it should have been the team’s breakfast.
Lawson understood.
It would have been Deadeye who had made the decision not to blurt out the bad news on a mobile-telephone link. Bad news always came better face to face, eye to eye. They had driven into the camping area, had closed the doors quietly behind them, had wandered – as if strolling in Sunday-afternoon sunshine – towards the minibus. Lawson had climbed out. Adrian and Dennis had followed him. Young Davies and the girl had come from a picnic table.
The food had been given to the girl.
Now, meeting Lawson’s gaze full on, Deadeye twisted his head and nodded to Bugsy. Bugsy had that perplexed look, which said he’d gone into uncharted territory and didn’t have a mental map for it. His fist went into his anorak pocket and emerged with the loose lengths of strapping, tangled with the Velcro, and the box hung down from them.
Deadeye said, ‘He’d dumped it.’
Bugsy said, ‘Well, someone dumped it. Might have been him, might have been one of the others. I’m not there, I can’t say whether it was voluntary or under duress, and I can’t say whether or not who he was with was aware of him doing it. It was hung from a tree. Might not have been done openly, because the last time the damn thing moved was in the night. That’s where we are.’
Deadeye said, in the flat voice that didn’t change whether it ranged across triumph or something worse than disaster, ‘There are two sets of footprints there, only two. I would assume, Mr Lawson, that it was the agent with the main target. It’s by a place where a boat was kept but a few yards from it. It’s only what I’m thinking, the agent stripped it off and left it but not where our target would have seen him lose it.’
Bugsy said, like it was a slur on his capabilities, ‘It was working well, had a very decent signal. It was going to do the job for us.’
Deadeye said, ‘He gave no indication, not at all, that he wasn’t prepared to wear it. What he’s done, it’s come out of a clear blue sky.’
Lawson pondered on it, kept his counsel and gave no indication – not a trifle – of the stampeding emotions in his mind.
Bugsy said, ‘Well, that was me out of it.’
Deadeye said, ‘The marks were of two sets of feet, clear enough in the mud. Then there was a scrape, like a flat-bottomed boat but with a keel had been hauled up from the water. It had been dragged along a path from the lake to the road. That was easy enough to follow and no effort had been made to disguise the track that was left. Then there was a road. It’s the main drag, Wlodawa to Chelm. They’d gone along it. Of course, no traces. No scrapes, at the side, no footprints. I have to guess but it can’t be a big boat. What took us so long, we went a mile up the road and looked for a trace, and a mile down the road, and we can’t find it, Mr Lawson. Before you ask me, I don’t reckon there was a vehicle involved. I’m almost certain of that. If a car had been pulled off the road and waiting there would have been fresh tyre marks, and if a car, or a pick-up or a truck, had been called up and arrived just for the loading, there would have been the stamped-down places where the boat had been and their feet while they waited. I’m thinking, Mr Lawson, that the boat was carried along the road and then they went back into the forest and towards the river. Stands to reason, they want the boat for the river.
We searched for that point where they came off the road, and we couldn’t find it. I’m not happy, but that’s the way it is.’
‘Why would he do that, Mr Lawson, ditch the gear? I mean, where’s he coming from?’
First, Lawson searched his mind: there had been bad moments when he had been with Clipper Reade, the intensifying-ass-pucker moments, but nothing as desperate as the moment now confronting him. What would Clipper have done? What would have been the response of the big Texan from the Agency? Well, for a start he would have lit a cheroot and – for a finish – he would have displayed no panic. Not a vestige. He asked how they were.
Bugsy said, ‘I’m flat, on my heels – No, I’m fine.’
Deadeye shrugged. ‘What do you need us to do, Mr Lawson?’
About as bad it could get was the loss of eyeball and contact in the last hours before an operation went critical.
He acknowledged the thoroughness of what they had done, thanked them for it, and suggested – not as an instruction – that they head for the river, that flooded area where Reuven Weissberg, his cohorts and the agent had been the last afternoon. He felt hammered by what they had told him, weak and old.
Lawson smiled broadly, displayed supreme confidence. ‘Yes, head on down there and get an eyeball again. It’s where they’ll be, with their boat, at the river. On you go.’
*
They had left. He had watched them drive away. Now Shrinks broke ranks. ‘I need to contribute, Mr Lawson.’
‘Best that you contribute when you’re asked to.’
‘Mr Lawson, the last time I ventured an opinion, I suggested that the agent had stress piled on him – in fact, “acute stress”. I seem to detect a marked lack of interest in what has been, and is being, inflicted on the poor wretch.’
Timebomb : A Thriller (9781468300093) Page 42
